[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [xmca] Plans, Planes, and Plugholes
Thanks, Bella! As always, you are a very important corrective to my often imaginary grasp of Russian. (I am going to do something about this; I have decided to quit my job and try to move to another university where I can study Russian more or less full time.)
I particularly like the metaphor of a STAGE, with a backstage plane, a midstage plane, and then the edge of the orchestra pit. First of all, it completely eliminates the problem of plugholes (which are what really disturb me in the geometrical plane model). Secondly, it is utterly consistent with Vygotsky's other metaphor (the wind which blows the clouds which condense into rain). And finally, it is the culimination of Vygotsky's intense and sustained interest in drama (but you knew all that!)
Before the idea of the "fourth wall" (which is very much a twentieth century invention, associated with Stanislavskyan realism), the front of the stage was for soliloquies, i.e. feeling, thought, and inner speech, albeit rendered as monologue(spoken written speech). The midstage area was for interpersonal dialogue and the back of the stage was, with some rare exceptions, the place for huge sociocultural pageants. So in a sense the BACK of the stage represents the "outer plane" and the FRONT of the stage, where the audience is privy to Hamlet's innermost thoughts, represents the "inner plane".
David Kellogg
(for now) Seoul National University of Education
--- On Mon, 5/30/11, Bella Kotik-Friedgut <bella.kotik@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Bella Kotik-Friedgut <bella.kotik@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Plans, Planes, and Plugholes
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Monday, May 30, 2011, 10:20 PM
David
In this context PLANE (stage, level) is more correct then PLAN
especially taking into account the whole text (right after the bit on
Stanislavsky ) because in the Russian theatrical terminology план is often
used with a spatial connotation (на переднем плане, крупным планом)
Bella
On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 4:45 AM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:
> I argued that the word "plane" which is used to describe планов should be
> translated as "plan", in the sense of work plan rather than as a two
> dimensional geometrical plane. Here's what I mean.
>
> In the last part of Chapter Seven, right after the bit on Stanislavsky
> (about which more below), Vygotsky says this:
>
> На этом и заканчивается наш анализ. Попытаемся окинуть единым взглядом то,
> к чему мы были приведены в его результате. Речевое мышление предстало нам
> как сложное динамическое целое, в котором отношение между мыслью и словом
> обнаружилось как движение через целый ряд внутренних планов, как переход от
> одного плана к другому. Мы вели наш анализ от самого внешнего плана к самому
> внутреннему.
>
> I gather this means something like:
>
> "On this we conclude our analysis. Let us attempt to look over at a glance
> what it has yielded in result. Verbal thinking appeared to us as a complex
> dynamic whole, in which the relation between the thought in a word was
> revealed as motion through a whole series of internal plans, as passage from
> one plan to another. We conducted our analysis from the outermost plan down
> to the quite internal."
>
> Later, Vygotsky develops the following analogy: the volitional-affective
> aspect blows clouds, the clouds of thought allow the condensation of
> raindrops (words), and these eventually emerge in a downpour. We may imagine
> that in extended and channeled speech they become a river.
>
> The wind and the river are the two images that are used in the following
> scene from Donizetti's "L'elisir d'amore", sung by Anna Natrebko and Rolando
> Villazon, who (I think we must confess) have a certain chemistry.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npb7OQK3nf0&feature=related
>
> In Chapter Seven, Vygotsky takes us on a journey from wind to clouds to
> rain, from the moment when an utterance is felt, through the moment when it
> is thought, to the moment when we half-rehearse it to ourselves in inner
> speech to the moment when we speak.
>
> As Martin says, these different plans are of very different degrees of
> planification and lability; just as "sense" and "signification" in external
> speech have very different degrees of stability.
>
> For this very reason we must walk backwards. Vygotsky takes us from the
> more stable and observable to the more labile and non-observable. But
> Vygotsky DOES walk us backwards; he doesn't take us up and down any
> plugholes and we don't leap from one plane to another.
>
> Vygotsky's friend, Stanislavsky, was a theatre/opera director, and he used
> a special script to teach his actors how to match utterances to inner speech
> to thought and to feeling. If we apply it to Nemorino and Adina, it might
> look something like the ATTACHED, which I think produces the general schema
> Vygotsky had in mind rather better than the "planes and plugholes" model
> which Professor Mack circulated earlier.
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
> __________________________________________
> _____
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>
--
Sincerely yours Bella Kotik-Friedgut
__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca