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Re: [xmca] Capriccio
I find it useful to distinguish between two different kinds of mutually defining relationship.
First of all, there is the relationship we find between, say, "buying" and "selling". This relationship can be said to be mutually defining in a quite literal sense: buying is being sold to, and selling is being bought off of. The two processes are simultaneous, but they do not really overlap: when you are a buyer, you do not sell and when you are a seller, you do not buy. It seems to me that the relationship between speaking and listening, and between reading and writing, is like this.
But the relationship between form and material, or between border and country, is also like this: contrary to what Michelangelo tells us, there is no David, already hidden in the block of marble that the City of Florence has given him, waiting to be released by his chisel. Form is the border, and material is the actual country where people live and work
Secondly, there is the relationship we find between, say, use value and exchange value. This relationship can also be said to be mutually defining, but it is not at all so in the same literal sense. For one thing, there are forms of value that are almost pure use value (e.g. my cooking dinner for my wife) and others which are almost entirely exchange value (the housing bubble). For another, the two processes are genetically asymmetrical: exchange value emerges from use value and not vice versa. Finally, the two processes really MUST overlap: I cook dinner with materials that I bought, and when exchange value no longer has any real relationship to use value then the bubble must burst.
Although listening and speaking do not overlap in this way, talking and interpreting (and the grammatical and lexical processes that underlie them) certainly do overlap, sometimes quite explicitly (e.g. in "uptake" and in "tails", that is, expressions such as "You do, do you?"). Although reading and writing do not overlap in this way, composing and comprehending (and the "inner speech" that invariably ties together the lines of written speech in the mind of the reader) definitely do.
I think this mutually defining but non-mutually exclusive distinction is the one which Vygotsky initially called "inner form" and "outer form", which eventually (by Chapter Seven) changes into sense-value and meaning-value of the word.
In opera, the first type of MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE mutually defining relationship was represented by the distinction between the aria (which is largely expressive, and often self-directed speech) and the recitative (which is usually social-communicative, and other-directed).
The distinction is a formal one: an aria has the intonation and stress of speech (in the exaggerated form of melody) but it has entirely regular rhythms. The recitative, in contrast, has the irregular rhythms of actual speech. Viewed as music (that is, as emotional coloration), the aria is "inner form" and the recitative "outer form", but viewed as speech (that is, as speech communication), the aria is "outer form" and the recitative is "inner".
Strauss's Capriccio does not obey this distinction: the whole of the opera is written in a kind of music that is both aria and recitative: there are exaggerated melodies, corresponding to the kind of stage declamation that was popular in the eighteenth century rather than to the intonation and stress we use today. However, there is CERTAINLY a distinction between emotional coloration and speech communication in the opera, as you can hear when the intimate sonnet "Kein anders..." is given first in speech and then as music.
Mandelstam wrote, rather confusingly:
“It is most convenient and in the scientific sense most accurate to regard the word as an image; that is, a verbal representation. In this way, the question of form and content is removed; assuming the phonetics are the form, everything else is the content. The problem of what is of primary significance, the word or its sonic properties, is also removed. Verbal representation is an intricate complex of phenomena, a connection, a “system”. The signifying aspect of the word can be regarded as a candle burning from inside a paper lantern; the sonic representation, the so-called phonemes, can be placed inside the signifying aspect, like the very same candle in the same lantern.” p. 77
Mandelshtam, O.E. (1977) Austin: University of Texas Press. Selected Essays. (Translated by Sidney Monas.)
I interpret this to mean that when we stand far away, the intonation and stress of a word are the signifying aspect, illuminating the sonic representation the way that music gives emotional coloration and depth to a libretto. But when we stand a little closer, we can see the same distinction between consonants (which are the outer form of outer form, because they are crucial in making semantic distinctions) and vowels (which are the inner form of outer form, because they are rich in emotional color).
No matter where we stand, there is both outer and inner, both phasal and semantic, both sense-value and meaning-value, because the relationship is of the second, genetic, type of mutually defining relationship, mutually defining but never for a moment mutually exclusive.
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
--- On Sun, 4/24/11, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Capriccio
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Sunday, April 24, 2011, 9:19 AM
David,
Yes, I've noticed that the notion of inner form continues to be used today in the literature on music theory. I suppose it's easier to accept that a piece of music, or a play, has inner form than that a word does - even though LSV was using the term 'word' broadly.
I don't know if it's me or if it's in the text of T&S, but I experience a kind of figure/ground instability with the inner form of the word. I can see the sound as the form, and the word-meaning as the content. Or I can see the sound as the matter (the material shaping of waves of air) and the word-meaning as the form. It's all an example of what Hayden White called "the content in the form," of course - in his case he was emphasizing that literary form prefigures a field of action for the reader (of a historical narrative, for example).
And LSV emphasizes in chapter 5 of T&S that it would be a mistake to think of form and content as though one fills the other as if it were some kind of vessel. There is, he argues, (of course!) a dynamic and dialectical relationship between the two.
Martin
On Apr 23, 2011, at 10:17 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
> Martin:
>
> Weirdly, I think one of the very best treatments of "inner form" vs. "outer form" of words is in Richard Strauss's great opera Capriccio, now playing "Live at the Met" and available on line from the BBC for the next seven days:
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010gh0m
>
>
> In the story, "inner form" is represented by MUSIC while "meaning" is represented by TEXT. The demotic version of the debate comes from an "amusement" composed by Antonio Salieri for a kind of operatic contest between himself and a certain Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
>
> Both men were challenged to write a one-act for the Emperor. Mozart did "Die Schauspieldirektor" and Salieri, apparently struck with writer's block, wrote a piece on whether he should begin writing with words or begin writing with music.
>
> It was a hot question at the time, because Rousseau and Rameau (both composers and both philosophers) were essentially asking the N. Ia. Marr question, that is, did human language begin with MUSIC (intonation and stress) or with WORDS (that is, consonants, vowels, vocabulary and grammar), the elements that Vygotsky later calls "phasic" and "semantic".
>
> What happened with the rivalry between Mozart and Salieri became the stuff of legend. It eventually made its way into Pushkin (who wrote a one act that had a big effect on Vygotsky) and Rimsky-Korsakov, only to be vulgarized and Freudianized by Peter Shaffer for the movie (see Eugene Matusov's article in the current MCA!)
>
> But what happened with the phasic and semantic elements? Which one predominates in the opera, and which in life? Ah...for that, you need to listen to the opera. True to life, it begins with music, and ends with speech.
>
> Flamand:Die Klänge der Natur singen das Wiegenlied allen Künsten.
> Olivier: Die sprache des Menschen allein ist der Boden dem sie ensprießen.
> Flamand: Die Schmerzensschrei gin der sprache voraus!
> Olivier: Doch das Leid zu deuten, vermag sie allein!
>
> (Flamand: The sounds of nature sing at the cradle of every art.
> Olivier: But human speech alone is the soil from which art germinates.
> Flamand: The cry of pain preceded speech!
> Olivier: But only words can explain it!)
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
> PS: The comment from the Met is that the end of the opera is non-trivial. This ignores the title, not to mention everything that comes between the title and the ending.
>
> The whole point is that the ending is trivial; without triviality there can be no ending at all.
>
> dk
>
> --- On Sat, 4/23/11, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
>
>
> From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Discussion of T&S
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Saturday, April 23, 2011, 6:01 PM
>
>
> Hi Steve,
>
> Good questions, and I won't claim to have all the answers.
>
>> One question to ask: What is Vygotsky's distinction between the meanings of the terms "unit" and "unity"?
>
> Somewhere in his excellent triangulated translation, David K notes LSV using two distinct words for unit and unity, if I remember correctly. I'll look for that passage.
>
>> A second question: In these various descriptions of the unity-pairs that compose word meaning, was it Vygotsky's intention to suggest that they are essentially synonymous, that is, are they referring to essentially the same processes?
>
> My reply to this question will not, I think, surprise you. My interpretation continues to be that LSV refers to a unity where two phenomena (often processes) come together to form something new which has properties different from both of them. To return to the familiar analogy, hydrogen and oxygen form a unity in water, which is a liquid when they are both gases. So no, the two terms are not synonymous.
>
> Or perhaps your question is whether each *pair* of processes is synonymous with each other pair? If that is the question, then I would say, not necessarily. The claim that word-meaning is a unity of thinking and speaking is not the same claim as saying it is a unity of generalization and communication. I think it varies from case to case.
>
>> A third question: This one relates to the discussion of the "psychological aspects" of word meaning. In each of these unities, there appears to be both a material and ideal aspect, or more roughly, both an external and internal aspect, or put still another way, both a social and a psychological aspect. Was this Vygotsky's intention?
>>
> I find this third question the most interesting. My reading is that in writing of word-meaning LSV was focusing our attention on a material artifact - spoken language - and arguing that it carries a form, an ideal aspect. I suspect that this is the implication of his use of the notion of word-meaning that is so disorienting. There is a Platonic tradition, continued by Kantianism and cognitive science, that can only understand form, the ideal, as something imposed on matter by mind; as the shape given to objectivity by subjectivity. This is Husserl's meaning-constitutive act of consciousness, for instance. But you remember our discussion of Ilyenkov's text, "The concept of the ideal"? I'll permit myself one brief quotation:
>
> "Of course, it would be absurd and quite inadmissible from the standpoint of any type of materialism to talk about anything “ideal” where no thinking individual (“thinking” in the sense of “mental” or “brain” activity) is involved. ... It does not follow from this, however, that in the language of modern materialism the term “ideal” equals “existing in the consciousness”, that it is the name reserved for phenomena located in the head, in the brain tissue, where, according to the ideas of modern science, “consciousness” is realised."
>
> In borrowing (for it's clear he didn't invent it) the notion of word-meaning as the inner form of the word, LSV is, it seems to me, proposing that there is an ideal side to language that is in noone's head (or mind; or consciousness). The child has to develop in order to be able to grasp this external ideal.
>
> That means that ideal/material doesn't map neatly onto external/internal, or social/psychological. Word-meaning is 'internal' to the word, but is social and objective - or at least intersubjective - and so external to the child. At least at first. It is also why word-meaning is not concept, because for LSV at least (as I read him) concept is an element of the individual thinking that the child slowly becomes capable of. Perhaps this is why Anna, who wants to locate thinking in social, communicative activity, if I understand her correctly, does not see a distinction between the two (word-meaning and concept). But I'm pretty sure that LSV does.
>
> Martin
>
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