[xmca] Re: Rey's call for a generative overflowing overlapping intertwining of the notion of "sense"

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

I wanted to add a further note to my response to this month's article for
discussion.  Mike casually [I think casually] suggested I contact John
Shotter and invite him into our current multilogue.  On impulse [and an act
of faith in the ethical orientation of this project of inquiry as
dialogical] I did email John and also attached Fernando Rey's article and
invited him to participate.  He reluctantly declined as he is swamped with
commitments to writing articles. However in the spirit of dialogue and in
response to Fernando's article John  sent me an unpublished article that I
believe supports the direction that both John and Fernando are pursuing.  I
sent a copy of John's article to Mike and he suggested that John's article
may be appropriate for posting as part of a new category of papers
located at XMCA.  I am going to quote a section of John's article to give a
sense of the central focus of his paper.  In is in the context of a section
of the paper titled "Speech as living human activity, as expression":

"In other words, in what follows, I will be focussing centrally on our WORDS
IN THEIR SPEAKING, rather than on the PATTERNS to be found in our ALREADY
SPOKEN WORDS.  The task, then, is to work FROM WITHIN THE STILL ONGOING
MOMENT OF SPEAKING, and to study the changing feeling of anticipation
created as an utterance unfolds .... not to look back on already completed,
past speech acts of speaking  for the 'logic' in what was said. This, in my
estimation, opens up a vast new "terra incognita" that now awaits our
further explorations.
     Central to its study, then, .... is a focus both on the RESPONSIVITY of
living and growing, embodied beings, both to each other and to the otherness
in their surroundings, as well as a focus on their EXPRESSIONS on THEIR OWN
unique ways of coming-into-Being.
     Vygotsky (1986), I think, foreshadowed the importance of this kind of
inquiry in setting out "the last step" in his analysis of inner "verbal
thought" thus: "thought is not begotten by thought;" he said, "it is
engendered by motivation, i.e., by our desires and needs, our interests and
emotions" he said. "Behind every thought, there is an AFFECTIVE-VOLITIONAL
TENDENCY, which holds the answer to the 'why' in the analysis of thinking"
(p.252, John's emphasis). Bahktin (1993) also makes a similar comment: "...
the word does not merely designate an object as a present-on-hand-entity,
but also expresses by its intonation my valuative attitude towards the
object, ... and, in so doing sets it in motion toward that which is
yet-to-be-determined about it ... Everything that is actually experienced
... as something given AND AS something yet-to-be-determined, is intonated,
has EMOTIONAL -VOLITIONAL TONE, and enters into an effective relationship to
me within the unity of the ongoing event encompassing us" (pp.32-33, John's
emphasis). In other words, .... not only is it possible to possess a
TRANSITIONAL UNDERSTANDING of 'where' at any moment we are placed in
relation to another person's expressions, but to possess also at that moment
an ACTION GUIDING ANTICIPATION of the range of next 'moves' they may make"
[2006 date]

END OF QUOTE

This extended quote is a way of introducing John Shotter's project that I
believe overlaps with Fernando Rey's focus on Vygotsky's notion of "sense"
which 'foreshadowed' an emerging line of inquiry within the sociocultural
turn in psychology. Mike may want to add a comment on his reason for
suggesting I introduce this paper to XMCA.  The terms "sense",
"responsivity", and "expression", as master concepts point to what John
refers to as "terra incognito".  Should we set sail? What provisions should
we take along? What sort of compass will help mediate our journey as we try
to find our way home?

Larry

  the title of John's article is "Vygotsky, Bahktin, Goethe: Consciousness
as Con-scientia, as Witnessable Knowing Along With Others" John also
mentioned that he has an article coming out soon in the journal "theory and
Psychology"


On Tue, Jul 19, 2 011 at 9:18 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> I am not sure how other's will reflect on Rey's article but I certainly
> felt at home while reading his expansion of Vygotsky's forgotten legacy. The
> entire article I read as an example of chiasm or ECART
> [separation-differentiation which is NOT opposition] Also the historical
> movement [motivation] BETWEEN the subjective and objective moments,
> reflective and generative moments, of his creativity/reflections is an
> EXAMPLE of chiasm.  The reversibility of these different [but intertwining]
> moments in Vygotsky's project that Rey so clearly articulates points to a
> much vaster and overflowing perspective on "psyche" as both subjective and
> objective.  Rey suggests Vygotsky's second moment, has become a reductive
> reification of his much larger project of locating the psyche and world in
> the realm of "sense"
>
> This larger more inclusive [and overflowing EXCESS] of "sense" as a radical
> re-visioning of psychology [and all the human sciences] seems, from my
> perspective, to share the same impulse of searching for a way to be at home
> in the world that Merleau-Ponty was articulating.  Over this last couple of
> years I have been trying to approach a "fusion of horizons" between
> continental philosophy and cultural-historical theory [both traditions of
> which I had a superficial background and still  I'm learning more]  Rey
> mentions Leontiev and Zinchenko as authors who were trying to situate
> Vygotsky's second moment in a larger con-figuration [context figuration] of
> sense as interwining process and configuration as reversible chiasm. I would
> add Anna Stetsenko to that list.
>
> I want to end with an example from M-P. He compared two marksmen with
> rifles. The first is aiming at a static target and the goal [intention] is
> to hit the static bullseye. The second marsman is "learning" how to hit a
> bird in flight and his "knowledge" is an embodied knowledge which needs to
> correct the aim "automatically" [in the same way as we automatically adjust
> to a particular handshake] and the mind/body is intimately involved in
> ORIENTING or COORDINATING this movement [motivation]  This for M-P was the
> difference between "empirical explanations" [sedimented] and being/becoming
> alive to moving birds in flight.  The patterns that connect for M-P are like
> musical patterns and therefore his notion of "singing the world" rather than
> "acting the world" or "discussing the world".   This WAY of seeing
> [perspective] is pointing to "sense" as articulated in Rey's article.
>
> Not sure if this line [thread] of reflection is interweaving a fused
> "fabric" or if I'm weaving my own subjective "fabric" but I personally am
> excited about the direction of Rey's orienting or "witnessing" and his way
> of honouring Vygotsky's legacy of cultural-historical theory. I want to
> highlight once again M-P's turn away from the search for THE primary basic
> [reductive] element or function and his coming to embrace empiricism and
> phenomenology as intertwining modes of "expression"  I would like to suggest
> that Vygotsky's notion of "sense" and M-P's notion of "expression are both
> trying to articulate a radically new direction for psychology intertwining
> the "visible and invisible" as ECART [separation-differentiation that is NOT
> opposition]
>
> Larry
>
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