Re: [xmca] Scribner on creativity

[Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>]

David,

Might we call this Cezanne's "labor of alienation" vs. Marx's "alienation
of labor"?

-greg


On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 6:09 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:

> I guess this is what I really meant when I said that scientific thinking
> begins with a step towards the real but artistic thinking is in some
> important sense the other way around. I have been re-reading
> Merleau-Ponty's essay on Cezanne, partly to try to understand the
> enthusiasm that many writers on this list have for phenomenology. Although
> I think I agree with Magritte's comment, that it is a little like watching
> somebody try to write a heavy tome on a philosopher by describing the
> thinker's pen-holder, I find I have learned something, almost despite
> myself.
>
> Cezanne is just the opposite of Adam Smith's little boy. Cezanne thinks
> that not only play but all forms of verbal thinking show a lamentable
> levity about the extremely serious business of perception. The thing to do,
> if you would paint, is to make the simple act of seeing as laborious,
> unpleasant and above all as physical as possible. It is only by
> establishing the utter meaninglessness of the face of a loved one that we
> can paint it as the slab of meat that it is.
>
> David Kellogg
> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>
> --- On Thu, 5/31/12, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> From: Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Scribner on creativity
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Thursday, May 31, 2012, 5:02 PM
>
>
> Reminds me of Adam Smith's tale of the boy who wanted to play (and what it
> implies about the importance of the "common workmen [sic]" - an insight
> long lost today):
>
> "A great part of the machines made use of in those manufactures in which
> labour is most subdivided, were originally the inventions of common
> workmen, who, being each of them employed in some very simple operation,
> naturally turned their thoughts towards finding out easier and readier
> methods of performing it. Whoever has been much accustomed to visit such
> manufactures, must frequently have been shewn very pretty machines, which
> were the inventions of such workmen, in order to facilitate and quicken
> their own particular part of the work. In the first
> fire-engines,*36<http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN1.html#nn36>
> a
> boy was constantly employed to open and shut alternately the communication
> between the boiler and the cylinder, according as the piston either
> ascended or descended. One of those boys, who loved to play with his
> companions, observed that, by tying a string from the handle of the valve
> which opened this communication, to another part of the machine, the valve
> would open and shut without his assistance, and leave him at liberty to
> divert himself with his play-fellows. One of the greatest improvements that
> has been made upon this machine, since it was first invented, was in this
> manner the discovery of a boy who wanted to save his own labour."
>
> [pasted from: http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN1.html]
>
> cheers,
> greg
>
>
> On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:
>
> > I'm working my way through Mind and Social Practice: Selected Writings of
> > Sylvia Scribner. SS died just as I was beginning to shift from
> information
> > processing to cultural psychology (my shorthand for the various
> Vygotskian
> > psychological approaches) and so it's interesting to go back in time and
> > see what role she played in helping to produce this shift (apparently, it
> > was considerable, although oldtimers and CUNY people might be able to
> fill
> > this story out better than I could).
> >
> > Anyhow, Chapter 25, "Thinking in action: Some characteristics of
> practical
> > thought" looks at her workplace study of a milk producing plant to see
> how
> > practical thinking functions. One thing that she documents is the
> flexible
> > thinking that takes place within highly routinized, specified practices
> in
> > the production process. Mostly creativity is considered to be the
> province
> > of artists or other people working with a blank canvas, but Scribner
> finds
> > creative thinking at work in the workplace within goal-oriented contours
> > and according to established routines. I think that her closing paragraph
> > (pp. 334-5) might help inform the discussion we're having on creativity:
> >
> > Unlike formal problem solving, practical problem solving cannot be
> > understood solely in terms of problem structures and mental
> > representations. Practical problem solving is an open system that
> includes
> > components lying outside the formal problem--objects and information in
> the
> > environment and goals and interests of the problem solver. Expertise in
> > practical thinking involves the accomplishment of a fitting relationship
> > among these elements, an accomplishment aptly characterized as
> functionally
> > adaptive. Beneath the surface of adaptation, however, lie continuing acts
> > of creativity-the invention of new ways of handling old and new problems.
> > Since creativity is a term ordinarily reserved for exceptional
> individuals
> > and extraordinary accomplishments, recognizing it in the practical
> > problem-solving activities of ordinary people introduces a new
> perspective
> > from which to grasp the challenge of the ordinary.
> >
> > I'm thinking about this observation in terms of my research on people
> > learning how to teach the discipline of English (writing, reading,
> > language) within the limits of the current accountability movement. SS's
> > perspective helps me steer away from fatalistic interpretations of such
> > socially-contoured practice (i.e., that the accountability mandates in
> > current US schooling remove agency from teachers) and recognize the
> > creative adaptions that teachers make within highly specified
> environments.
> > Good stuff.
> >
> > Peter Smagorinsky<http://www.coe.uga.edu/~smago/vita/vitaweb.htm>
> > Distinguished Research Professor<
> > http://www.ovpr.uga.edu/docs/policies/iga/DRP-Guidelines.pdf> of<
> > http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/of> English Education<
> > http://www.coe.uga.edu/lle/english/secondary/index.html>
> > Department of Language and Literacy Education<
> > http://www.coe.uga.edu/lle/english/secondary/index.html>
> > The University of Georgia<http://www.uga.edu/>
> > 315 Aderhold Hall<http://www.coe.uga.edu/about/directions.html>
> > Athens<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens,_Georgia>,<
> > http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/607/02/> GA<
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(U.S._state)> 30602<
> > http://www.city-data.com/zips/30602.html>
> >
> > Advisor, Journal of Language and Literacy Education<
> > http://jolle.coe.uga.edu/>
> >
> > __________________________________________
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>
>
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar
> Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
> Department of Communication
> University of California, San Diego
> http://ucsd.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar
Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
Department of Communication
University of California, San Diego
http://ucsd.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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