I'm attaching an article that I think lays out the text, context, intertext
issues quite well. p
Peter Smagorinsky
Professor of English Education
Department of Language and Literacy Education
The University of Georgia
125 Aderhold Hall
Athens, GA 30602
smago@uga.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of Larry Purss
Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2010 11:48 AM
To: ablunden@mira.net; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] The Interpersonal Is Not the Sociocultural
Hi Andy
You wrote
"Every text has a context, a history, and a speaker."
I have enjoyed books [Ihe Primary Triangle is an example] that take a theme
and write chapters on the same theme or text from different perspectives.
In "The Primary Triangle" which is writing about the 1st year of an infants
life and the father-mother-infant triangle wrote in this format. There was a
chapter on " structural relations" another chapter on "functional
relations" and a third chapter from "dynamic/historical relations" What do
you or others think about this format or narrative chapter?
Another example could be Martin's approach of elaboeating "epistemological
relations" in one chapter and then wring a chapter on "ontological
relations"
Your comment on texts having context, history, and a speaker
[subjectivity/intersubjectivity] prompted this thought.
Thanks
Larry
----- Original Message -----
From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
Date: Friday, April 2, 2010 8:57 pm
Subject: Re: [xmca] The Interpersonal Is Not the Sociocultural
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Michael,
>
> Every text has a context, a history and a speaker. To
> understand a text it is certainly necessary to access each
> of these resources. Every German speaker will know without a
> moment's reflection the semantic connection between
> Tätigkeit, Tat and tun, but I find that few German speakers
> are aware of the history of the concept from Herder to
> Fichte to Hess to Marx. It is possible to exactly what Marx
> is talking about in Theses on Feuerbach, even though Marx
> never explains what he means by Tätigkeit, because we know
> the history of the word and who Marx was talking to at the
> time and the context of Germany after the suppression of
> Hegelianism. Key words like Tätigkeit have to be studied,
> and I find that this study is as necessary for German
> speakers as it is for Anglophile monoglots like me ...
> especially if they believe that "there is nothing outside of
> the text" :).
>
> What I don't like about Derrida is that he exaggerates the
> incompatibility of semantic networks. If he were right, then
> not just critical reading, but human life would be
> impossible. :) Thanks to shared material culture, shared
> activity, shared history and knowing the speaker, people
> always manage somehow to make each other understood, ... so
> long as there is an effort. As old Schleiermacher said, we
> start in the middle, and work backward and forward, we are
> never completely ignorant of the writer's cultural context
> because we too are human beings and share ideals.
>
> BTW, the other side of it for English speakers is that
> English has its Latin and Greek roots, as well as its
> Anglo-Saxon origins, embedded in the words, and for
> philosophy it is quite useful. For example, a German speaker
> can understand a lot about Wesen (Essence) because of its
> connection with the verb Sein (to be), but on the other
> hand, English speakers have the esse before their eyes.
>
> Such a wonderful rich tapestry of meaning ...
>
> Andy
>
> Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
> > Rather than thinking in terms of the concept :-)
> interpretation, I think in terms of reading. There are scholarly
> communities, and they decide which readings are within its
> bounds and which ones are outside. And there is a lot of
> politics. There is also a lot of colonialism in the policing and
> setting up of boundaries.
> >
> > Last night, a doctoral student in one of my methods classes
> said that there are a lot of bad readings of Vygotksy out there
> in the educational community, some shallow (Hegel called it
> "abstract") and others just plain out inconsistent. You cannot
> flatten all readings into a equal ideas.
> >
> > In any event, the recurrent suggestion to use an automatic
> translation system cannot help us better understand one another
> or a philosophically thinking scholar.
> >
> > Michael
> >
> >
> >
> > On 2010-04-02, at 11:41 AM, mike cole wrote:
> >
> > Two points seem more or less clear from the point you are
> making about
> > translation issues, Michael R.
> >
> > 1. They inhere in the subject matter, even within a single language,
> > depending, upon other things, on theoretical orientation.
> > 2. They are made more damaging from translation from one
> language to
> > another.
> >
> > David kel has been very focused on the second issue. The
> problems are indeed
> > very challenging. The best way i can think of to address them
> is by people
> > offering their interpretations, discussing the virtues of
> various ideas that
> > emerge, and for everyone to exercise a LOT of self-constraint
> in assuming
> > that they know the one true story, even as they are convinced
> that the OTHER
> > has it wrong.
> >
> > At present, i am still struggling to understand David Kel's
> discussion of
> > concepts moving between the evidence in
> > whichever translation of LSV and his own, always-challenging,
> examples from
> > classroom discourse derived from
> > his everyday practices and targeted examples-to-think with.
> > mike
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 11:14 AM, Wolff-Michael Roth
> <mroth@uvic.ca> wrote:
> >
> >> HI Michael,
> >> you seem to be ascribing to me a position that I don't hold.
> I don't think
> >> this is the one that Derrida holds. But the one meaning or
> whatever is a way
> >> of talking about words that has been used here, not by
> myself. But you don't
> >> understand Heidegger's thinking, form/content, in English,
> >> THe non-dialectical readings of Vygotsky, Leont'ev, Bakhtin
> and others that
> >> is so pervasive in the Anglo-Saxon culture would not be so
> convincing if you
> >> were to read the originals, precisely because there is no
> single "meaning"
> >> (a word that is not used by hEidegger, Derrida, and others)
> but webs of
> >> significations that are inseparable from the world we live in
> and are
> >> conscious of---Heidegger uses Geflecht, Derrida picks up on
> it. It is
> >> inherent in Leont'ev's work, where the object exists twice,
> once ideally
> >> once materially . . . .
> >> The problem is that English translations allow readings that
> the original
> >> never would allow . . . and you can see this in scholarship
> >>
> >> Michael
> >>
> >>
> >> On 2010-04-02, at 10:08 AM, Michael Glassman wrote:
> >>
> >> Michael,
> >>
> >> I suppose there is one point of view - but an entire
> philosophical school
> >> developed in the United States in contradiction to this idea
> that you can
> >> "know" words and symbols in general - that they have specific
> meanings>> beyond their immediate context, and beyond the
> immediate relationships and
> >> connections that they have in that context. Peirce's
> ideas of semiosis
> >> reflects on the idea that when we use words they are part of
> a much larger
> >> communication structure and our understanding of the words
> occurs within
> >> that structure. Mead's idea on the danger of claiming
> some type of
> >> ownership or knowledge of symbols outside of their immediate
> pruposes cedes
> >> too much control to those who claim this knowledge - leading
> to the
> >> development of symbolic interactionism. When you say
> translatable it is not
> >> just about words but larger communication structures
> involving time and
> >> place and purposes, and it is ever changing. It is
> simply impossible to
> >> know how these connections might play out at any given point
> in time, and
> >> you never know where insight might come, and you must always
> be open to that
> >> insight. Vygotsky, of Leontiev, or Heiddeger do not
> exist anywhere as
> >> reified entities who we must "understand" - at least I think
> in the world of
> >> Peirce and Mead. They exist as tools to solve
> problems. Because those
> >> problems exist in the here and now and not in 1931 Soviet
> Union or Germany
> >> the only way we can know them is in the here and now in the
> context of the
> >> problem we are trying to solve. There is the
> possibility that the new
> >> student who doesn't know any language but English may come up
> with an
> >> insight that is lost to the seasoned scholar who speaks many
> languages.>>
> >> Michael
> >>
> >> ________________________________
> >>
> >> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Wolff-Michael Roth
> >> Sent: Fri 4/2/2010 12:49 PM
> >> To: ablunden@mira.net
> >> Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> >> Subject: Re: [xmca] The Interpersonal Is Not the Sociocultural
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> I am thinking about what Vygotsky says, about the
> intertwining of thought
> >> and language, I prefer to say, thinking and speaking. And if
> this is the
> >> case, then Heidegger, Hegel, Vygotsky, Leont'ev are, strictly
> speaking,>> untranslatable. This is the point that Ricoeur and
> Derrida make. But
> >> equally, because there is translation from English into
> another such English
> >> every time you are asked "what do you mean," and you give it
> a second try,
> >> there is an inner contradiction or continual dialogue that
> makes every
> >> language non-identical with itself. THis is precisely the
> engine for the
> >> change of language Bakhtin writes about, the point that makes
> a language to
> >> live, and a language no longer spoken is a dead language
> precisely because
> >> it is dead, nobody speaks it, and so it is fixed.
> >>
> >> So grammarians, many linguists, are dealing with corpses,
> well, they say
> >> they deal with corpuses, perhaps corpuses are corpses. . . .
> telling us
> >> little about the life of language, which is the language of
> life . . .
> >>
> >> Michael
> >>
> >>
> >> On 2010-04-02, at 6:51 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
> >>
> >> Why not use it? Absolutely, and German has so many absolutely
> beautiful and
> >> untranslatble words! (Russian is a closed book to me
> unfortunately) ...
> >> Gestalt, Bildung, Schwerpunkt, Anschauung, and others who
> semantic netowrk
> >> is so extensive and rich, Begriff, Wesen, and so on, .. ...
> the list goes on
> >> forever. Since Kant taught philosophy to speak German, I
> think any English
> >> speaker has struggled to keep up. You can imagine that
> studying Hegel
> >> without fluency in German has always been a struggle. There
> is an excellent
> >> Hegel Dictionary by Michael Inwood, which helps a great deal
> in navigating
> >> through these multilingual mazes.
> >>
> >> Andy
> >>
> >> Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
> >>> Andy, in a footnote of an article I am working on with Luis
> Radford,>> where we do a Leont'ev reading of mathematical
> activity, I wrote this:
> >>> We ground our reading in the German version, which is in
> many ways more
> >> just to the original than the English translation. For
> example, the Russian
> >> and German versions distinguish between two very different
> nouns, Tätigkeit
> >> (deyatel'nost' [????????????]) and Aktivität (activnost'
> [??????????]), both
> >> of which are rendered in English as activity. The Russian and
> German>> versions distinguish phenomena that are societal
> (gesellschaftlich,>> obshchestvennoi [????????????]) from those
> that are social (sozial, sozial'n
> >> [????????]), but the English version renders both as
> "social." In English,
> >> we find the word "meaning" that translates znachenie
> (????????)/ Bedeutung
> >> even though the Russian / German equivalents refer to an objective
> >> phenomenon at the cultural-historical level rather than the
> personal sense
> >> (Sinn, smisl [?????]) students make ("construct") as part of
> lessons. Our
> >> specific word choices have b
> >> een made such as to promote the specific, the very different
> reading of
> >> Leont'ev's work that the German version allows.
> >>> As you can see, other languages do make the difference. We
> do have the
> >> means to make the distinction when it comes to the adjective
> >> social/societal, so why not employ it? Cheers,
> >>> Michael
> >>> On 2010-04-02, at 6:26 AM, Andy Blunden wrote:
> >>> Michael, I only heard the word "societal" for the first time
> in 2005. It
> >> is a technical word not found in the ordinary language or
> even in Marxism,
> >> SFAIK, ... well that's my excuse for going 60 years without
> learning it. :)
> >> It was only when I came into contact with academic psychology
> and sociology
> >> that I discovered that "social" had an interpersonal meaning
> actually! :)
> >> Otherwise what I now call societal was what I used to call social.
> >>> It was Weber who said that the task of sociology is to
> reduce concepts
> >> about society to "understandable action, that is, without
> exception, to the
> >> actions of participating
> >>> individual [persons]."
> >>> But I think most people don't even think of societal
> phenomena as
> >> relevant to psychology. Societal phenomena are just objects
> of perception.
> >> Conversely, Weber was saying this because people generally
> believed the
> >> converse, that, like the weather, societal phenomena exist
> independently of
> >> the actions of individual people.
> >>> Andy
> >>> Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
> >>>> Jay,
> >>>> one of the sources of this problem is that in many cases,
> where another
> >> language (Russian, German) uses the adjective "societal" the
> English>> translations use social. The former has all the
> political and cultural
> >> dimensions you want to see, whereas the "social" becomes
> unpolitical and
> >> uncultural.
> >>>> Michael
> >>>> On 2010-04-01, at 10:25 PM, Jay Lemke wrote:
> >>>> In the course, and on the exams, I found it necessary to
> push students
> >> very hard to understand that "social" did not simply mean
> interpersonal, but
> >> also cultural. Whether talking about ZPD or scaffolding or
> any sort of
> >> social theory of learning, students, even good, bright, phd
> students, unless
> >> previously trained in anthropology (rare) and even if with
> some training in
> >> sociology or political science, simply saw the social as
> always the
> >> interaction among individuals. (Non-American students seemed
> to have less of
> >> this problem.)
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> xmca mailing list
> >>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >> --
> >> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------
> >> Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>+61 3 9380 9435 Skype andy.blunden
> >> Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
> >> http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
> >>
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>
> --
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> -------
> Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435
> Skype andy.blunden
> Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
> http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm
>
>
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