Re: [xmca] Abstract to Concrete

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Good morning Christine, [and others listening in on this private/public
forum].

As I was reading your response, I was aware of the open public nature of
our conversation. I was trying to get my bearings on which style of writing
in which to *listen* and *read* your commentary. As I respond back, I am
being reflective on the *type* of commentary and the *type* of
intersubjectivity that I am *playing* with as form [medium]
Christine, I believe there is built in risk [anxiety, dread?] that may
accompany *going out on a limb* and playing with new styles of
conversation.  With this caution I'm not sure of my audience [or how to
address *us*]  and how intimate or *distanced* of a genre to *choose* to
locate yours and my thinking out loud together?  With this caution, I am
responding in a conversational format but am aware this choice may be
idiosyncratic and not offer enough context for other readers.. However,
this question I'm posing is one response to your commentary which follows.
On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 2:44 AM, Christine Schweighart <
schweighartc@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Larry and anyone wondering,
> I made a big leap from your fragment - but it lit a train of
> experience which crystalised in Covent Garden, swamped in expense and
> elite refinement:) experiencing Handel's Tamerlano in 2010 - I'm still out
> on ' The Muse' as aesthetic value..but its form in music was
> directly connecting with its mood, which appears here in your
> fragment.
>
[LP] This linking *aesthetic value* with *form in music* DIRECTLY
connecting with its *mood* seems to be a notion of relational participation
that may possibly be addressed to forms of writing as conversations.

>

 Yes, your reading follows mostly what was prompting me.
> Your point: In his phrase *face of the other* is the UNIQUE *other* who if
> categorized [pigeon holed] is totalized.
> - I'm thinking about that still  - particular seems OK,  'totalized'
> in your sense is  in the sense of 'categorised'  in that 'formal
> logic' kind of way - next thing would be to start measuring and
> counting.. That doesn't seem profound enough to me as a dynamic.
> Levinas discusses that 'being' is already 'disturbing' , he's a
> theological writer,


[LP] Christine, I am ambivalent of how my values relate to Levinas
perspective. My responses to follow will be *descriptive* of what I
understand about Levinas ethical stance.   I do question and have doubts
about how he is calling and reminding us how we *ought* to proceed.


> Levinas  uses the idea of recurrence, but he also seems
> to reside in a 'passivity of self' a theme recurring in his writing in
> many ways - I'd have to work really hard  ( and it's beyond me) to
> appreciate a locus of debate...
>
[LP] Christine, I believe this question is at the heart of the struggle to
understand Levinas. I am also struggling to understand his perspective.
However, you mentioned *locating an appreciative space for this debate*
Greg has engaged this topic explicitly is his exploring *recognition* and
has reminded me of the long tradition in the Western Tradition with this
topic. The book *Bound by Recognition* questions if focusing on *mutual
recognition* may be the source of *struggling*  Andy writes on
*recognition* and the Hegelian response.  Levinas participates in a
*tradition* with roots in Heiddegger and his focus on *mineness* Levinas
Project is explicitly to challenge ontology and being [is] as foundational.
For Levinas the ethical and moral *ought* PRECEDES ontology and
epistemology. The *face of the other* for Levinas must be *answered* BEFORE
any form of categorization or pigeon holing.


> ''being and entities will turn out from the start to be important and
> to be determinant for truth, but this distinction is also an
> amphibology and does not signify the ultimate. ''
> where meeting a person is moment of recognition
>
[LP] This term *ultimate* is a very STRONG claim

>
> {side bar} [LP1] as a symbol refers to a third speaker which is myself in
> an earlier post where I first responded to Christine]
>


> [LP1] Christine, you then link *face of the other* with *dialogical
> expression* and a PARTICULAR quality of relations.
> > Next, you caution that THIS quality of witnessing *the face of the
> other* may be lost in written text or shifted to a generalizable *everyman*
> sure - it's a mystery. What Levinas brings in is a  strange  argument
> though
> " The recurrence of persecution  in the oneself  is thus irreducible
> to  intentionality in which, even in its neutrality as a contemplative
> movement, the will is affirmed. In it the fabric of the same,
> self-possesion in a present, is never broken. When affected the ego is
> in the end affected only by itself, freely. Subjectivity taken as
> intentionality is founded on auto-affestion as an auto-revelation,
> source of an impersonal discourse. The recurrence of the self in
> responsibility for others, a persecuting obsession, goes against
> intentionality, such that responsibility for others could never mean
> altruistic will, instinct of 'natural benevolence,' or love. It is in
> the passivity of obsession, or incarnated passivity, that an identity
> individuates itself as unique, without recourse to any system of
> references, in the impossibility of evading the assignation of the
> other without blame..... " (Levinas, p112)
>


> then ' 'under accusation by everyone, the responsibility for everyone
> goes to the point of substitution. A subject is a hostage.
>  --- well that's one possibility....but where does it go?
>

"accused in its innocence, subjectivity in itself is being thrown back
> on oneself. i.e accused of what the others do or suffer, or
> responsible for what they do or suffer ....... this accusation can be
> reduced to the passivity of the self only as a persecution, but a
> persecution that turns into an expiation. ... Everything is from the
> start in the accusative. (levinas)
>
> Basically then he locates a withdrawal and questions a beginning
> arising in this passivity.
> I couldn't 'do' such a thing to my children though -  nor do I think
> I'd get them 'ready for the world' to follow such involutions! That's
> not the kind of 'naked exposure' of a social world I enjoy..
> Levinas,  Otherwise than being (1981) p112
>
 So if not passivity - a vitality?

[LP] My answer is now to you and Levinas and Greg who I *read* as also
exploring this topic. The question of *vitality* for me goes to the
question of *agency* and what I term *dis-position* If one *chooses*
intentionally to *open a space* for another to come into being is it
possible to *develop* a sense of agency and *vitality* through ACTING
within this way of orienting which is cultivated within a tradition.
Christine, you mentioned Levinas participates within a theological
tradition [Judaism] but also within Continental Philosophy. He is
*answering* Heiddegger as a moral imperative. His *call* seems to expose
one's *self* to a *naked social world*
I don't have *THE answer* to Levinas but he does  generate *plural*
responses  or a multude of *a answer* that I believe helps each of us to
explore reflectively [privately and publically]our own *value
presuppositions* which are implicit in each and every theory, episteme,
techne, and practical wisdom.
I personally intuitively *sense* possible *self*-formations which are
AGENTIC which are oriented towards prioritizing the relational *rhythum of
recurrence within each occurrence, which ethically may *seem* to be passive
but acutally is a deliberate *dis-position* to *hear the other into voice*.

> [LP1] Christine, you then shift to *othering* in the English essay form
> which  RELIES on the quality of separation of audience through the
> *construction*  of a particular type of reader - *the intelligent informed
> reader*.
>
>
CS  Perhaps I'm thinking of passivity , the art of positioning the
> reader as a passive one 'so that the object comes to them'
>  [LP1]In your final turn you remembered our earlier conversations on
> *plurality* of forms of living. Plurality is NOT relative, or random.
> Plurality is multiple [discourses, traditions, genres, EACH constituted
> within effective history. Pluralism is NOT looking for universal truths,
> nor is it relative.
>  CS These are Kant's kind of universal truths ?? I'm just thinking
> about this with my reading Ilyenkov holding me in this period.
> [LP1] It is multiple and contrasting VALUES or NORMS which may be brought
> into dialogue but NEVER made *equal*.
>
[LP2] Christine, *pluralism* is a term I borrow from Suzanne Kirschner's
work. She is participating in a new *movement* with Divison 24 -Theoretical
and Philosophical Psychology- of the American Psychological Association.
 For example our exploration of *recognition* or my exploration of
*intersubjectivity* or even the notion of *pluralism* are particular
concepts with meanings within particular *traditions* or *genres*. The
notion of *human development* is another example. Though plural they are
NOT random or relative. Each particular meaning of *a* concept is multiple
and there is NO *the* concept.
*A* concept exists historically within *a* particular tradition or horizon
of understanding. EACH use of the concept is situated within a tradition.
The traditions [which express value *oughts*] can be further *developed*
within conversations, and DIFFERENT forms of *reader* and *listener* and
*writer* and *speaker* and *author authoring* [in other words different
dis-positions engender and *evoke* different *moods*] keep recurring in
rhythmical resonance through effective history. EACH OCCURRENCE though
UNIQUE and never the same as a previous occurrence is participating within
a rhythmical RECURRENCE of these *plural* conversations *through time*.
This time can be *micro* as developed here in our current occurence as an
event BUT is this micro moment ALSO transforming the rhythmical recuurence
and therefore NEW NOVEL KINDS of *readers* and *writers* , listeners and
speakers RELATIONALLY participating in an emerging mood which honours the
*psychology of the other* as different and UNIQUE.

I will pause with Nelle Morton's expression:*Hear the other into Voice*.

This expression is an ethical and moral *dis-position* which is not
*natural* but is *cultivated* and may develop new and novel agentic [not
passive] ways of responding. This way requires feeling *safe* with
pluralism, uncertainty, ambiguity, and a willingness to continually NOT
know as understanding is fallible.


> [LP1]Your final reference was to al-andulus which I *imagine* as a
> historical moment when pluralism was honoured.
> >
>
 CS yes it was a 'holding period' too. I'm intriqued as in circles
> around Edward Said lectures etc this is assumed to be 'gone' and
> questioning begins with 'wouldn't that be what we need?' - yet to me I
> have 'lived' present day values which *are* such a 'recurrence' ,
> 'it's all around' in Andalucia of the 1980's/90s - isn't it still ?-
> were n't those ( victims of nostalgia?)  able to look and find what
> they so want?
>
[LP] That is a BIG question. It brings to mind McLuhan's *acoustic space of
the ear* which is more  intimate in contrast to *vision* which is more
differentiated. I'm playing with the notion that THIS format may be *seen*
or *heard* as a particular dis-position or *way* of understanding. I am now
expressing hunches, and speculations, and *imaginary possibilities* but
transforming recurrences into possibly novel rhythmic ways of reading,
listening and recognition as new forms of *reading RESPONSE* as
answerability.


> [LP1] Christine, I may have mis-read or mis-understood some particular
> points but I hope I captured the theme I saw moving through your commentary.
> Thanks, Larry you did:)
>
> [LP1] I would like to pause here with a comment Huw made in response to
> the concept of rhetoric grounded at its source within reading and
> readers. The history and development of *reading* and our conscious
> understanding of  reading as a phenomena I heard in your response
> describing the distanced  intelligent scholarly reader. *Reading RESPONSE
> theory* explores the PLURALITY of ways of reading. I wonder if a new way of
> reading *as conversational* and *as dialogical* may be developing to *see
> through* the intelligent scholarly reader who
> is distancing from others [as a particular historically constituted  kind
> or norm of reading]
> As we explore the plurality of norms of reading [and the value
> presuppositions within each type of reader] we may be developing a
> new understanding of developmental psychology.
>
> If that is a way that helps more , more freely - ,, !!
>
> [LP1] Christine, I considered writing this off line as a more private
> response, but I am questioning the boundaries between private and public
> discourse  and the values and presuppositions embedded in these fuzzy
> boundaries.
>
> yep,  -  ethicalities  of living in an IT mediated world - makes it so
> much harder:) one step back , two forwards though..
> Thanks again.
>  Christine.
>

[LP] Thanks Christine.  I am ambivalent if this is too *private* a
correspondence which is too *particular* for a public forum.  I do sense
people are *playing* with these notions. I'm reminded of the time when
books were becoming commodities and readers and writers were transforming.
There were deliberate experiments with the way books were presented and
what we now experience as a *typical* conventional book form was more
fluid. The internet seems to allow experimentation with form. It may flop
but I wanted to experiment and since you posted online I took the libery to
respond in kind. I hope I was *minding* my manners??
Larry

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