Andy
Counterposing survival and recognition may be a false dualism. The
term our current"preoccupation" with the universal NEED for any person
in any era to be recognized may be more accurate. The question becomes
Where does this preoccupation come from?
Hegel may have posed it more as a problem of a struggle for life or
death.
Andy, there seems to be another theme of recognition as central for
constituting the KINds of persons we become. I this era we are
preoccupied with recognition AS identity. As Gregory outlined is this
a result of how profoundly we have taken a wrong turn and our
formation of identities within institutional participation is
currently NOT meeting our universal need for recognition [except
sublimated as recognition of achievement] Is this wrong turn
developing I-IT forms of relational dialogue rather than I-Thou forms
of recognition. Is this the "cost" of membership that is being required?
On the same topic but looking at FORMS of reasoning. I read this
statement by Rupert Wegerif
"In place of reductionist explanations, Wittgenstein's method is that
of rediscriptions to SHOW US the phenomena in a DIFFERENT light. This
he calls PERSPICUOUS REPRESENTATION"
This term "perspicuous" as emphasizing a form of reasoning that SHOWS
[perception] is similar to Merleau-Pont's form of reasoning as
figure/ground.
On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 6:39 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
Larry, my guess is that Recognition is a universal need for any
person, in whatever era, only that in postmodernity it has become
problematised. Axel Honneth claims, for example, that wage
struggles were always *really* struggles for recognition. I don't
think that makes sense. I think being underpaid is always an
insult, and I guess there has always been a basis for reading this
motivation into economic struggles, but I would distinguish
between a mode of theorisation and a mode of action. There is also
a question over whether it makes sense to counterpose survival and
recognition.
It seems to me that Hegel introduced the idea of Recognition very
much as a matter of life and death. Imagine two creatures of
different species (eg a human and a lion) bumping into each other
in a confined space. You have a definite problem of mutual
recognition. Consider Captain Cook sailing into a harbour in New
Zealand. Same problem. Imagine being an asylum seeker arriving in
NW Australia in a leaky boat. Same problem. Imagine being a
graffiti artist. Same problem. But I think it is only recently
that recognition (as having the rights of an equal citizen within
a nation-state, someone whose labour meets the needs of other
people) has become problematised. Certainly, the desire for
recognition is now a major motivation for people. I suspect that
people write research papers for learned journals more for
recognition than money or science.
Andy
Larry Purss wrote:
Hi Gregory and Andy
Thank you for your responses
As you can see in my response to Martin, I am wondering if
the desire for
recognition is a general "type" of desire for humans.
Gregory, from this
possibly basic, primary desire for recognition, the particular
forms of
recognition developing as psychological experiences that are
experienced as
split as we participate in our institutional arrangements is
unique to
modernity. From this particular historically constructed
formation of
psychological splitting a particular kind of search for
identity ensues. I
agree with this way of looking at the question of identity, and
recognition. There is a dialogical aspect of response and
anticipation
in using language [and possibly a dialogical resonse to
prelinquistic primary intersubjectivity].
Merleau-Ponty and Bahktin both seem to have grappled with this
ontological
theme and the various ways this theme is expressed
epistemologically. Their
reflections on "differences" which don't get transcended but
rather get
contained [subjegated] within particular relational
configurations or forms
as persons become INformed. The ethical question from this
assumption of
dialogue [as opening spaces between perspectives] becomes
what institution
formations are best able to "hold" the differences through
opening spaces of
I-Thou mutual dialogue. Identity from this stance is not a
search for
identity as [A=A] but rather a search for spaces of opening
that hold the
differences.
This may sound too "merely interactional" as "holding of
perspectives
within shared space." But scholars such as Merleau-Ponty who are
articulating perspectives within a figure/ground metaphor of
"looking" as a
particular form of reasoning emphasize the cultural-historical
source of
perspectives and the dialogical spaces of intersubjectivity
where meaning is
located BETWEEN perspectives as the arena they are playing in.
Larry
On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 4:40 PM, Gregory Allan Thompson <
gathomps@uchicago.edu <mailto:gathomps@uchicago.edu>> wrote:
Larry,
Very thought provoking post. These happen to be issues
that are on my mind
for a paper that I'm working on, and so thank you for
providing me with an
opportunity to write these ideas out. But please forgive
my indulgence in
the far too many words that follow.
I think that Andy's concerns with mediation are good ones.
The split in
ways of thinking about recognition that I have suggested
previously is a
split between "recognition" as a psychological need (maybe
kin to
"self-esteem" of the 90's) and recognition as an
ontological ground of
subjectivity. I would put W.I. Thomas and (hesitatingly)
Axel Honneth more
in the first camp and Hegel and Mead in the second. I
would further suggest
that the second camp, recognition as an ontological ground
of subjectivity,
has more relevance around the globe, whereas the first
one, recognition as a
psychological need, is particularly relevant in Western
contexts.
For evidence of the non-global nature of recognition as a
psychological
need (in the particularly Western way that we think of
it), you simply need
to look to how people respond to depressed persons in
China. In America (and
the West generally?), we tend to offer recognition to
someone who is
depressed by saying nice things about them, e.g., to a
disconsolate grad
student who is depressed about their dissertation and
unable to write:
"you're a great scholar and you're work is very important
so don't get so
down," OR, as the SNL character Stuart Smalley used to say
"you're good
enough, you're smart enough, and people like you."
In contrast, in China, the kind of thing that is said to
depressed persons
is more like: "you're a shame to your family, everyone
else is working hard,
quit being so lazy and finish your work!" And the funny
thing is, it works.
(this anecdote is loosely based on the work of a
colleague, Jason
Ingersoll, who spent over 2 years in China studying
depression - his rather
remarkable dissertation is available online, and I have a
copy).
So for this reason, I'm hesitant to consider the
"psychological need"
approach to recognition as a cultural universal. But
within the US, it seems
essential.
I think that there might be an interesting third approach
that captures the
Hegelian sense of recognition as an ontological grounding
for subjectivity
while also recognizing it as a psychological need. Larry,
it seems like this
might be where you are headed.
In this regard, I think that Charles Taylor has some
interesting thoughts
on recognition as having a kind of particular importance
in modernity. This
is because in earlier times identities were prescribed by
society (think
feudal system or the caste system of India). In capitalist
modernity,
individuals are thrown into society without any solid
anchors of identity. I
take this to be a projection of Marx's "all that is solid
melts into air"
onto the realm of identity. Nowadays, because we no longer
have an a priori
anchor - a biological (or otherwise) right - to a
particular identity, WHO
we are is up in the air and we are confronted with a kind
of existential
crisis (importantly, this is a crisis only so long as we
have a desire to be
a "somebody" - an assumption that I find generally
plausible, but not
absolutely necessary; cf. Buddhistic notions of Self). The
resolution of
this crisis comes through the various moments of
recognition (consummation)
that we experience throug!
h !
others and which constitute us as a particular "somebody"
(and better a
"somebody" than a "nobody").
This recognition can happen in everyday interaction
rituals where we greet
others and are greeted by others in particular ways (e.g.,
the somewhat
stereotyped scene from old movies where the company
president walks in and
is greeted along his walk by a string of "Good morning Mr.
X" and Mr. X
either responds with a simple nod or responds with "Good
morning Jane" - in
the lack of parallelism in the greeting ("Mr. X" vs.
"Jane" or nothing at
all), there is an important moment of recognition for both
parties - an
emergent WHO).
Recognition can also happen through various institutional
means, such as
when we take a test or get a good grade in school (and
listen to high school
or college students after getting the results of a test
and you'll see/hear
that this moment of comparison/recognition is one of the
first things that
they seek: "I got XX, what did you get?", or more
tactfully, "How did you
do?").
Recognition can also happen through other social means
such as the value of
one's portfolio (a different kind of "value" but one that
appears to the
bearer to have a kind of universality for seeing how one
"measures up" to
others), or the act of going shopping and being realized
as a "customer"
(and advertising is fundamentally about creating a moment
of recognition as
a particular type of customer - traditionally an "elite",
but currently a
"unique"). Political news programs (Foxnews or MSNBC) can
also provide a
moment of recognition by validating the interpretive
framework ("Democrat"
or "Republican") or ground against which we define
ourselves as good, right,
and moral. And there are, of course, the more obvious
kinds of recognition
in "the praise and ovation of the people" - as the tag
line of the TV show
Iron Chef used to say - and which you would find on other
audience
competition shows like American Idol.
Now treating these examples in reverse order, the local
cultural
fetishization of American Idol, political news programs,
shopping, grades,
and greetings - all of this points to a particular
importance of the role of
recognition in THIS historical moment. Recognition is the
resolution to the
existential crises of *being* in modernity. In the
interests of making the
point, I've gone well beyond Taylor's argument. But
hopefully this provides
one (potentially flawed) way of thinking about recognition
in THIS cultural
historical moment.
Larry, I find your approach to all of this to be
particularly interesting
precisely because it is different from how I have been
approaching it and so
it pushes me to think in new ways about these ideas. I'm
not sure if you'll
be able to make sense of any of the deeply confused ideas
I put forward
above, but I'm always interested in hearing what you have
to say.
As for your question about whether mediation of dialogical
relational
intersubjectivity is prior to mediation by material
artifacts, I'm not sure
I understand you perfectly clearly. I wonder how you are
conceiving of these
two types of mediation? And how does answering one way or
the other affect
your approach to, say, teaching kids? (I'm assuming that
this is what you
are after, in the end). And I do like your both/and
approach to answering
this question but I'm not clear that you were comfortable
with this as an
answer.
And now, in looking back at your post, I just realized
that I failed to
consider what seems to be the most important issue that
you raised - what
does this mean in pedagogical practice.
As for this question, I fully agree with what I take to be
your main point,
namely, that teachers often loose sight of the role of
recognition for
students and tend to focus more on the stuff to be
taught/learned. But I
think that I would take it in a slightly different
direction by emphasizing
recognition less as a kind of humanistic need (or desire)
and thinking more
in terms of the teacher contributing to the determination
of WHO the child
takes her/himself to be in a given moment, and this will
affect who the
child will be in the next (i.e. how s/he will act).
Effectively recognizing a child as a good student will
lead to the child
be(com)ing a good student. The real challenge is: HOW do
you *effectively*
recognize a child as a good student? Andy's concern with
the mediatedness of
recognition makes this HOW into a non-trivial task.
Because recognition is
mediated, it is beyond the simple control of the teacher.
Take the following as an example: would it be enough for a
teacher to
simply say individually to each student in the class that
the teacher thinks
that the student is a brilliant student? This might do
some good for a
kindergarten class, but for them, they don't exactly know
what this means
and even if they believe you, they won't know how this
translates into
behaviors and actions (and it probably won't have very lasting
consequences). For a high school class, the kids would
probably look at you
and wonder about your sincerity - and/or your motivations
(e.g., "is he just
saying that so that we won't give him a hard time?" - and
in college it
would be: "is he just saying that so that we'll give him a
good rating on
RateMyProfessor.com?"). Some high school kids would "know"
that you are just
"blowing smoke up their you-know-where," and would
disregard the comment
altogether, and thus the moment of recognition is lacking.
The problem is that once you get kids old enough (maybe
7-9), recognition
is no longer just the simple dyadic recognition of a
parent saying something
to them at a particular moment in time. Instead, as kids
get older,
recognition becomes much more than this. It becomes an
absolute. One IS this
type of person or that. This is, in part, due to a more
enduring notion of
Self, but is also, in part, due to the fact that
recognition now happens
with respect to a macro-social order, it is now mediated
by what we might
call, following Mead, a generalized other. You might say
that this perduring
generalized other becomes the ground for the perduring
self, and without
which, the self could only be a groundless and fleeting
mirage. The social
ground locates the individual.
But, importantly (and luckily for us), the ground is
moving, as are the
possible figurations. Thus, telling a student who has
gotten C's and D's all
her/his life that s/he is brilliant is not going to be
very effective. S/he
knows better. What is needed is the artful practice of
bringing out this
truth. This often involves re-interpretations of her/his
behaviors and
actions, but it can also involve introducing a new frame
for interpreting
those actions and behaviors such that these actions and
behaviors can truly
become evidence of "brilliance." When this works, it is a
beautiful thing.
But it doesn't always look like what we might expect
(engaging in an
argument with a student could function as a moment of
recognition that the
student is smart enough to be challenged). Furthermore,
recognitional
processes don't always work precisely as the teacher might
have hoped. This
is because the process of recognition is mediated and is
thus, in the end,
out of our hands. In a third t!
ha!
t mediates the teacher student dyad. And most often, these
processes of
recognition go mostly unnoticed by teachers and do their
work "in the dark,"
so to speak. Shedding light on these processes of
recognition seems to me to
be important work.
Okay, that was much too much, but all stuff that is on my
mind for what I'm
presently working on so thank you very much for the
opportunity to think
these ideas through in writing.
All the best,
greg
Larry Purss wrote:
Gregory, thanks for this reference on the topic of
desire for
recognition.
My question to Martin was my attempt to understand our
fundamental need
for
recognition, [self/other], and how this fundamental
need is transformed
by
cultural-historical institutional arrangements. As I
read Martin's
article
he located the need for recognition as one of the 6
foundational
[ontological?] GROUNDS of the sociocultural perspective.
If the desire for recognition is foundational , then the
dialogical understanding of communication as the
relation BETWEEN self
and
other is primary [not the dialectical resolution of
tensions into a new
cognitive synthesis which may be derivative from a more
primary intersubjective relational foundation] I'm
wondering, reading
scholars such as Merleau-Ponty, if mediation of
dialogical relational
intersubjectivity, is prior to mediation by material
artifacts.
This question is probably expressing my ignorance of
the relation between
the notions of tool use and intersubjectivity but how
else to get
clarity?
In actual practice it may be impossible to separate
these two mediational
means BUT it seems that the dialogical perspective
emphasizes the
mediation
of self/other intersubjective relational
being/becoming while mediation
via
tool use emphasizes internalization and cognitive
synthesis through
cultural-historical object usage.
The notion of biosocial niches can accomodate both
mediation through
other
persons AND mediation through artifacts, so really it
is not an either/or
question but rather a matter of emphasis. The
practical question in
school
settings is how to be aware of the profound desire for
recognition of all
the persons [students and teachers] which teachers may
loose sight of in
the
focus on developing and internalizing scientific
concepts. [which comes
at a
cost of transmuted desire for recognition]
The focus on the intersubjective relational
"betweenness" of the
dialogical
perspective seems to emphasize the "desre for
recognition" more than the
language of mediated tool use.
Hesitant to press "send" as I expose my ignorance
Larry
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*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA:
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Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
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