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

Dear Rod,
I appreciate what you are saying here more than you might think. All
trailblazers must have occupiers. How would we even know about Vygotsky's
work if his co-workers and family didn't preserve his writings from Stalin
and his minions.



On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 4:53 AM, Rod Parker-Rees <
R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk> wrote:

> Sorry about the delayed response but I wanted to pick up on Andy's
> reference to Vygotsky's comment about 'good little boys and girls'. While
> it may be true that good little boys and girls seldom go on to become
> 'great men' or 'great women' of history, it may also be worth considering
> whether the great men and women who are celebrated in history would have
> been able to achieve what they did achieve if they had not had the support
> of 'good little boys and girls' who kept things going around them (emptying
> the bins, installing phone lines, even running university administration
> committees). I was reminded of a talk gven by Vera John-Steiner in Bristol
> (about her book on 'Creative Collaboration', I think) where she emphasised
> the collective endeavour out of which 'genius' can emerge - ideally like
> the rugby player hoisted into the air by team-mates in a line-out but also,
> sometimes, from a less decorous scrambling over heaps of toiling masses.
>
> Perhaps this puts a rather different gloss on 'undergoing' which may feel
> very different for the hoisters or those who get clambered over!
>
> All the best,
>
> Rod
>
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf
> Of Andy Blunden [ablunden@mira.net]
> Sent: 05 November 2011 15:09
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Notions of suffering, enduring, undergoing
>
> 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>
> >         [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
> >         <mailto: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
> >     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>
> >
> >     __________________________________________
> >     _____
> >     xmca mailing list
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> >     http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > *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
> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> Book: 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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