[xmca] A Failure of Communication

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Dear Colleagues--

I have been reminded of an issue that has been nagging at me for some time,
that we have not had a discussion of any of the articles in the special
issue of
MCA called "concepts in the wild."  The article selected by a plurality of
voters
was by Chuck Bazerman on concepts in the process of writing. But no one has
commented on the article. That seems to me a shame. In fact, the entire
issue,
with its stellar set of authors and papers is worth discussing, and I
figure there will be more
articles on this general theme in the time to come, spanning as it does,
the story of
all those practice in which we acquire and deploy concepts in organizing
our social life and experience the world.

Below are two items for your consideration: The first is the abstract of
Chuck's paper. The second
is a stanza from a poem by T.S. Elliott which I believe is relevant to
topic of the paper and
in any event, worth considering in its own right. I first encountered it in
Jack Goody's *Domestication of the Savage Mind, *a book about the
relationship between thinking and writing in societies varying in their
practices related to the concept of literacy.

If the 25 people or more who led us to this article are not in a position
to contribute to the discusion,
perhaps this invitation will be sufficient for others, including Chuck, to
do so.

And if no one is interested in this discussion, we might re-visit the
process by which articles for discussion taken from MCA. Or  not.

mike
-----------------------

T. S. Elliott from “East Coker”



So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—

Twenty years largely wasted, the years of *l'entre deux guerres*

Trying to use words, and every attempt

Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure

Because one has only learnt to get the better of words

For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which

One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture

Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer

By strength and submission, has already been discovered

Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope

To emulate—but there is no competition—

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost

And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions

That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.



The whole poem is here: http://allspirit.co.uk/coker.html
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