Re: [xmca] http://marxismocritico.com/category/psicologia-marxista/

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Shannon, I have enjoyed John Shotter's perspective on language use as
being far more inclusive  than merely being representational *picture*
language.  His use of the term *joint attention* is more
commonly understood to mean *dialogical.  I will post a fragment from the
last article on John's list of readings for a course he taught.  This
fragment highlights an interesting reflection on metaphysical myths:

"Let us return to Wittgenstein’s remarks on the primitive origins of the
language-game, for something special occurs in our living, embodied,
face-to-face meetings with each other that has not, I feel, been
universally recognized and acknowledged in either philosophy or psychology:
the special nature of what Bakhtin (1981) has called the *dialogical*, and
I have called “joint action” (Shotter, 1980, 1984).

The something special that occurs begins thus: It almost goes without
saying, that when one person reacts bodily to another, they do not simply
react to the fact of the first person’s physical movements, but to what
they anticipate its outcome is *going to be*, i.e., to the *direction* or *
intention* of those movements – and many such anticipatory reactions occur
immediately and spontaneously without deliberation. Thus, we can say that,
prior to our self-conscious awareness of the existence of meaning in
people’s actions, meaning is nonetheless spontaneously present *in* our
mutually responsive, living interactions with each other. Next, we need to
note that, as soon as we enter into such mutually responsive relations with
those around us, then, instead of one of us first acting individually and
independently of all the others, and then an other replying to us in the
same way, the actions of us all are to an extent ‘shaped’ in the course of
their performance by our spontaneous responsiveness to the actions of all
those others (and the other things) around us. Thus as a consequence, none
involved can in fact account their actions as wholly their own – besides
ourselves, events issuing from the others and othernesses in our
surroundings exert a formative influence in shaping *our* expressions.
This, as we shall see, is the source of what Wittgenstein identifies as the
*grammatical* influences on our conduct.
Why have we not appreciated this before? Because, suggests Wittgenstein
(1953), the metaphysical mythologies we have inherited from past
philosophies that are now embedded in our ordinary forms of language –
especially those from the metaphysics of Cartesian philosophy – easily make
us overlook this usually unnoticed background to our lives together: “A
picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our
language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably” (no.115).
Especially ignored until very recently, has been the power of an invisible,
unspecifiable other or otherness – an otherness, called by Bakhtin (1986)
the *superaddressee* (p.126) – who places demands and requirements on us
over and above any of the actual other “second parties” visible to us to
whom we address our utterances, a “third party” (p.127) which makes its
presence felt in all our relations with our surroundings. Often, we
experience it as the presence of a “must” or an “ought,” an “ideal” that
cannot be otherwise – “thoughts ‘must’ be in the head, where else could
they be?” Wittgenstein (1953) discusses the nature of this demanding
presence thus: “We want to say that there can’t be any vagueness in logic
The idea now absorbs us, that the ideal ‘must’ be found in reality.
Meanwhile we do not as yet see how it occurs there, nor do we understand
the nature of this “must.” We think it must be in reality; for we think we
already see it there... as something in the background – hidden in the
medium of the understanding” (nos.101, 102). It is these inclinations,
compulsions, urges, taken-for granted assumptions of obvious rightness –
the “musts” in terms of which we conduct not only our professional research
investigations but also most of our everyday life activities – that
Wittgenstein (1953) has questioned, and shown, not to be wrong, but not
always the *only* possibilities available to us in our interactions with
the others and othernesses around us.

Shannon, THIS fragment, as I read it, suggests our modern conceptions of
*mind* as being geographically located *in our heads* is as much as
*metaphysical picture* as the god-centered universe was to Medieval
consciousness.


I wonder if others read this fragment differently??

Larry


On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 7:38 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> Peter
>
> This is a fascinating treasure trove of resources.
> As I was meandering through this site [which I've put on my favorites bar
> on my computer] I came across this page listing numerous articles by John
> Shotter on Vygotsky.
>
>  http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jds/page15.htm
>
> Thought it may be of interest to others. He used these articles in a
> course he taught.
>
> Larry
>
> On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 6:01 AM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:
>
>> http://marxismocritico.com/category/psicologia-marxista/
>>
>> of possible interest to Marxists/Vygotskians. p
>> __________________________________________
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