Re: [xmca] Notions of suffering, enduring, undergoing

[Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu>]

Yes Andy,
If you read Dewey's biography, you will certainly find that he did suffer
much.
I think what Greene was referring to was Dewey's sense of optimism that had
its cultural-historical
antecedents in New England / Yankee ingenuity etc. In that time, men had to
be tough and mostly
suffer in private.
RL

On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> That's an interesting observation, Robert. I have been trying to summarise
> in what way Dewey did not quite get to where Vygotsky got to. Up till today
> I had written that "Pragmatism could explain ideas as means of adaptation
> to the world, but not why people were prepared to die for them; it could
> explain how people pursued goals, but was less effective in understanding
> how people formed their goals." But then I read the excellent article
> "Experience is Pedagogical" where he has an exposition on interest, which
> fits well with Leontyev's ideas about how children develop an interest in
> something. He is very strong on the question of the primacy of interest.
> And he certainly agrees that everything depends on motivation, will and
> teleology. Menand's wonderful book, "The Metaphysical Club" placed the
> emergence of Pragmatism as a reaction to the disastrous Civil War, and what
> they saw as reckless pursuit of Big Ideas. So this seemed to tally. The
> Pragmatists could not understand why the Abolitionists and Confederates
> were prepared to enter a national holocaust on a principle.
> Dewey says that "the chief characteristic trait of the pragmatic notion of
> reality is precisely that no theory of Reality in general, /überhaupt/, is
> possible or needed." Holmes' theory of law rests on the same conviction. I
> still feel that there is something missing in when they rule out the role
> of abstractions in motivating human beings. And that is what lies at the
> root of Tragedy, isn't it? I suspect Dewey well knew tragedy, but dedicated
> his life trying to eliminate it!
>
> Andy
>
> Robert Lake wrote:
>
>> Andy,
>> That is an astute observation about the notion of "happy".
>> Maxine Greene owes much of her view of aesthetics to Dewey's "Art as
>> experience"
>> yet her main critique of Dewey was that "he had no sense of the tragic".
>> Unlike Vygotsky whose personal perezhivanie  was marked by the tragic and
>> perhaps
>> as Kozulin speculates, was one reason he was fascinated with Hamlet.
>> Robert Lake
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 9:25 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:
>> ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>
>>    In this same essay, Dewey is insistent that an experience is not
>>    composed of components which are respectively practical, emotional
>>    and intellectual, but these adjectives (he says) only arise in
>>    subsequent discourse about experience, when we interpret
>>    experience. An experience is essentially an irreducibly all of
>>    these things, and in his view any attempt to seaprate out an
>>    emotional component will destory the unity of the experience.
>>
>>    And I liked it when Vygotsky said, in Educational Psychology:
>>    "People with great passions, people who accomplish great deeds,
>>    people who possess strong feelings, even people with great minds
>>    and a strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys and
>>    girls."
>>
>>    I think the same goes for "happy little boys and girls."
>>
>>    Andy
>>    Rod Parker-Rees wrote:
>>
>>        Hi Larry,
>>
>>        I certainly didn't want to suggest that children are (or even
>>        should be) care-free, only to note that not ALL of their
>>        experiences (or ours) are  best described as suffering. Your
>>        post clearly helps to explain why we tend to focus more on
>>        distressing experiences, since it is these, more than more
>>        positive ones, which call others into sympathetic action so
>>        they are more note-worthy. An unusually happy child is not
>>        likely to have a teaching assistant allocated to provide
>>        special support, nor to be seen by an educational psychologist
>>        but this does not mean that we should understand experience as
>>        suffering.
>>
>>        There is another can of worms around the relationships between
>>        emotions and the development of individualised identity but
>>        that may be for another thread!
>>
>>        All the best,
>>
>>        Rod
>>
>>        -----Original Message-----
>>        From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
>>        <mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.**ucsd.edu<xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>
>> >
>>        [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.**ucsd.edu<xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>        <mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.**ucsd.edu<xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu>>]
>> On Behalf Of Larry Purss
>>        Sent: 05 November 2011 12:46
>>        To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>>        Subject: [xmca] Notions of suffering, enduring, undergoing
>>
>>        Hi Rod and Andy
>>
>>        Andy
>>        Thank you for the article on Dewey.  I thougt that article
>>        should remain the focus of that thread, but the question of
>>        the centrality of suffering to experience is also worth exploring.
>>
>>        Rod, you wrote
>>
>>         I am intrigued by the focus here, as in many of the postings
>>        on perezhivanie, on experience as 'suffering'. The etymology
>>        of 'suffer' (from 'sub' - under and 'ferre' - to bear) makes
>>        it a close cousin of 'undergo'
>>        and it is, I think, interesting that both terms have been used
>>        in ways which have moved their meaning towards the dark side.
>>
>>        Rod, you caution us not to impose our care-worn adult
>>        sufferings onto the experience of children who are more "care
>>        free".
>>
>>        In my work in schools I am called to respond to children who
>>        are experiencing what I will call "foul frustration" as an
>>        experience of what is not working.  This experience is often
>>        expressed as anger that is a passionate response to what is
>>        not working.  Infants also seem to express e-motions that may
>>        be understood as frustration for what is not working.
>>
>>        A developmental psychologist in Vancouver [Gordon Neufeld]
>>        sees development as biological and innate. Though his origin
>>        narrative I don't agree with, he does have an interesting
>>        perspective on how to respond to a childs foul frustration for
>>        what is not working.
>>
>>        He believes that a person must come to a place of "rest"
>>        before going in a new direction.  What is sometimes needed to
>>        move frustration from anger to experiencing saddness are for
>>        what is not working are "tears of futility".
>>        He suggests that these tears of futility are expressed within
>>        particular types of relational configurations that are safe,
>>        secure, and "attached".
>>
>>        When the tears of futility are met and "held" by the other
>>        this releases the frustration for what is not working and the
>>        child can lean into the other person and come to rest.  Often
>>        the child at this point is exhausted.  However, after coming
>>        to rest the child is now moved to exploration of the world and
>>        is care free and open to new experiences.
>>
>>        This idea of expressing "tears of futility" for what is not
>>        working [foul frustration] within intersubjective forms of
>>        caring and "holding" gives me a way to respond to expressions
>>        of "anger".  Suffering or enduring or undergoing can sometimes
>>        be an experienceof stuckness in patterns that are not working.
>>
>>        In summary
>>
>>        The ideal is for children to be care free but frustration is
>>        an inevitable aspect of becoming and e*motion.  If not met and
>>        "held" by others this frustration can lead to a stuckness that
>>        must be endured, and undergone.
>>        It is others who are central in channeling the path of
>>        frustration for what is not working.  Now I want to emphasize
>>        it is not "merely" intersubjective as the artifactual "worlds"
>>         mediating experience are the conditions which lead to
>>        frustration or being care free. Focusing on changing the
>>        conditions that lead to the frustration is also a central
>>        project but frustration is inevitable and unavoidable. When
>>        undergoing foul frustration how one is met within this
>>        experience is vital for how the child goes on.
>>
>>
>>        Larry
>>        Larry
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>>
>>
>>    --     ------------------------------**------------------------------*
>> *------------
>>    *Andy Blunden*
>>    Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/**toc/hmca20/18/1<http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1>
>>    Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/*
>> *>
>>    Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.**aspx?partid=227&pid=34857<http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
>>    <http://www.brill.nl/default.**aspx?partid=227&pid=34857<http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
>> >
>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> *Robert Lake  Ed.D.
>> *Assistant Professor
>> Social Foundations of Education
>> Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
>> Georgia Southern University
>> P. O. Box 8144
>> Phone: (912) 478-5125
>> Fax: (912) 478-5382
>> Statesboro, GA  30460
>>
>>  /Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
>> midwife./
>> /-/John Dewey.
>>
>>
>>
> --
> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
> ------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/**toc/hmca20/18/1<http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1>
> Home Page: 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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-- 
*Robert Lake  Ed.D.
*Assistant Professor
Social Foundations of Education
Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Georgia Southern University
P. O. Box 8144
Phone: (912) 478-5125
Fax: (912) 478-5382
Statesboro, GA  30460

 *Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
midwife.*
*-*John Dewey.
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