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Re: [xmca] Concepts as sedimentation
Tony
this friendly amendment is a vast improvement. It points to the Poetics of
in*formation, or as Merleau-Ponty was exploring in his last work, "The
Visible and the Invisible," ways of "singing the world"
Captures the centrality of wayfaring as embodied experience and expression
and paths as formations OF wayfaring.
Larry
On Sat, Sep 24, 2011 at 7:50 PM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:
> Yes … But I would offer this friendly amendment: Instead of
>
>
>
> "Sedimentation is the settling of culture into things," I would suggest:
>
> "Sedimentation is the settling of culture into formations," where
> "formation" (as in in*formation) is inseparably the material formation and
> the forming of it and the form in which it's formed.
>
>
>
> Freire, with Myles Horton of the Hylander School (where Rosa Parks, Martin
> Luther King, Jr., & others went for training) has a book with the English
> title, "We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social
> Change." The Portuguese title is "O caminho se faz caminhando: conversas
> sobre educação e mudança social."
>
>
>
> The book was in English first and then translated into Portuguese, but the
> title comes from a verse by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado:
>
>
>
> Caminante, son tus huellas
>
> el camino, y nada mas
>
> caminante, no hay camino
>
> se hace camino al andar.
>
> Al andar se hace camino,
>
> y al volver la vista atras
>
> se ve la senda que nunca
>
> se ha de volver a pisar.
>
> Caminante, no hay camino
>
> sino estelas en la mar.
>
>
>
> (Wayfarer, the only way
>
> is your footsteps, there is no other.
>
> Wayfarer, there is no way,
>
> you make the way by walking.
>
> As you go, you make the way
>
> And stopping to look behind,
>
> You see the path that your feet
>
> will never travel again.
>
> Wayfarer, there is no way -
>
> Only foam trails to the sea.
>
> -- Alan S. Trueblood, trans.)
>
>
>
> But Freire and Horton are not talking about roads that are just washed away
> as soon as we have trodden them.
>
>
>
> Their idea is closer to that of Lu Xun, writing about the possibility of
> hope at the conclusion of his short story "My old home." These are not
> exactly Lu Xun's words (which are a bit less succinct), but Lu Xun is
> widely
> quoted as saying "Roads are made by people walking" -- with the idea that
> this is how our roads have come to form -- as formations that enduringly
> in*form our wayfaring (note that "way" here can be rendered "dao," which
> does mean path, and walking a path, as well as the more cosmic Daoist
> "dao."
>
>
>
> So … culture is sedimentation, not just of things, as formed, but of forms
> of things, and forms of doing, and forms of being, I think.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2011 9:59 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Concepts as sedimentation
>
>
>
> I'm not sure, Larry, what Dillon's concept of "culture" is, but I would say
> that sedimentation is what culture is, but I don't know how he is tying the
> issue of dualism into it.
>
>
>
> Andy
>
>
>
> Larry Purss wrote:
>
> > Andy, Tony
>
> > This quote from Dillon [referenced by Donna Orange who I'm sitting by
>
> > the window reading] seems relevant as an explanation of M-P's notion
>
> > of sedimentation.
>
> >
>
> > "Sedimentation is the settling of culture into things. In our culture,
>
> > the separation of the animate and the inanimate has permeate all
>
> > things. it is, perhaps the most deeply entrenched of all dualisms; it
>
> > permeates our language, our thought, and the things themselves. There is
> no "epoche"
>
> > [bracketing] capable of freeing us in one act of reflection from
>
> > millenia of sediment.; it is, rather, the work of a lifetime to form the
> "askesis"
>
> > [training, striving] required to dig out from under the CONCEPTUAL
>
> > weight of the dualist tradition."
>
> >
>
> > Andy, I see a "family resemblance" between your project of locating
>
> > "concepts" within a developmental/historical con-text and
>
> > Merleau-Ponty's notion of sedimentation as "conceptual" weight.
>
> >
>
> > Larry
>
> > __________________________________________
>
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>
> >
>
> >
>
> >
>
>
>
> --
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *Andy Blunden*
>
> Joint Editor MCA:
>
> <http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744>
> http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
>
> Home Page: <http://home.mira.net/~andy/> http://home.mira.net/~andy/
>
> Book: <http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
> http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
>
>
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