Re: [xmca] Perezhivanie and Dewey's concept of experience

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Thanks again, Martin.
Question about "crisis" in LSV and your quotation.

*And he in fact wrote that a developmental crisis "is most of all a turning
point that is expressed in the fact that the child passes from one method
of experiencing the environment to another," *

This formulation appears to assume that the crisis is overcome. But while
perhaps the child experiences the active environment differently, isn't
that experiencing the emotion-evocation of conflicting, as-yet-unresolved
forces mixing it up?

Gotta go back and re-read, as usual.
mike

On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 12:19 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

> Larry,
>
> Seems to me that in the Lectures on Child Psychology, where LSV introduces
> the term 'experience' in a discussion of the importance of grasping the
> social situation of development, he was striving once again to overcome the
> dualisms that keep returning. He wrote that "In modern theory, experience
> is introduced as a unity of consciousness, that is, a unity in which the
> basic properties of consciousness are given as such, while in attention and
> in thinking, the connection of consciousness is not given." He's building
> here on the line of Romantic philosophy (Dilthey held the chair of
> philosophy at the University of Berlin that Hegel had held) that insisted
> that there is a level of human existence and understanding that is prior to
> the subject/object split; a way of knowing the world that doesn't require
> mental representations. Perhaps he was reacting to limitations he'd run
> into in his own analysis of thinking (that in thinking "the unity of
> consciousness as such disappears"). Perhaps he was returning to (or perhaps
> he never lost sight of) the fundamental importance of emotion (the alpha
> and omega) in human psychology.
>
> If this is on the right track, then he'd have to see a potential for
> change in experience, no? He'd have to understand experience as itself
> dynamic: transforming and transformative. And he in fact wrote that a
> developmental crisis "is most of all a turning point that is expressed in
> the fact that the child passes from one method of experiencing the
> environment to another," and in addition that "behind every experience,
> there is a real, dynamic action of the environment" - this is what leads to
> the crisis, a crisis that must still be understood as "internal" to the
> child-environment system.
>
> It seems to me that this brings us right back to the topic of the
> Psychology of Art - or perhaps better to say that LSV's central interest
> never changed. The work of art is an environmental 'mechanism' that we
> become lost in, in an engagement that at its best is deeply emotional and
> that can be profoundly transformative. A good play, a good book, a good
> movie, is an experience, an event, a rupture in everyday routine
> experience, that grabs us and shakes us. This phenomenon seems not to fit
> into the categories of subject and object, and this means that grasping
> intellectually how it works can help us develop theory that avoids those
> pestilent categories. If that took him back to Aristotle, why
> not?Dialectics was also a Greek word!
>
> Martin
>
> On Mar 2, 2013, at 8:27 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Martin
> > This was a fascinating new thread you opened up. I appreciate how you
> > weaved Aristotle and catharsis into our exploration of experience and
> *an*
> > experience.
> > Larry
> >
> > On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 5:12 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Thanks for that Martin. All very interesting indeed.
> >> I always tend to presume that wherever an ancient source is cited for
> some
> >> concept, unless the citing author is a classical scholar, there was some
> >> *mediating* source which is the *proximate* source of the concept. The
> >> attached excerpt which I think I took from the CW of Freud, explains
> where
> >> I got the idea that Freud got it from Josef Breuer (mediated via a
> friend
> >> who is au fait with Freudian thought). But, maybe Vygotsky was studying
> >> Aristotle. I'l have a look at that section of "The Psychology of Art".
> >> Thanks.
> >> But sources aside (I defer to you on that, Martin), the descriptions you
> >> have provided of catharsis square with my understanding as well. I
> >> appreciate how you have made the connection between the usual Feudian
> >> meaning of catharsis, and the aesthetic process which was central for
> the
> >> young Vygotsky - and Dewey too apparently! But I don't see this in
> >> Vygotsky's later work anywhere. Would be interested if you can find
> >> anything about catharsis in this vein post-1924.
> >> Also, I can't recall where I read something about art which explained
> why
> >> art is necessary to communicate an experience directly, by allowing the
> >> audience to "re-experience" the experience, rather than an explanation
> of
> >> it. Dewey? Stanislavski? Vygotsky? Do you know?
> >>
> >> Andy
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Martin Packer wrote:
> >>
> >>> Here's Victor Turner, in the book I mentioned in my previous message,
> on
> >>> what for Dilthey makes a difference between 'experience' and '*an*
> >>> experience':
> >>>
> >>> "These experiences that erupt from or disrupt routinized, repetitive
> >>> behavior begin with shocks of pain or pleasure… Then the emotions of
> past
> >>> experience color the images and outlines revived by present shock. What
> >>> happens next is an anxious need to find meaning in what has
> diconcerted us,
> >>> whether by pain or pleasure, and converted mere experience into *an*
> >>> experience. All this when we try to put past and present together"
> (36).
> >>>
> >>> "Aesthetics, then, are those phases in a given structure or processual
> >>> unit of experience which either constitute a fulfillment that reaches
> the
> >>> depths of the experiencer's being (as Dewey put it) or constitute the
> >>> necessary obstacles and flaws that provoke the joyous struggle to
> achieve
> >>> the consummation surpassing pleasure and equilibrium, which is indeed
> the
> >>> joy and happiness of fulfillment" (38).
> >>>
> >>> I'm not sure why Andy attributes Vygotsky's notion of catharsis to
> >>> Bleuler and considers Aristotle irrelevant. It is to Aristotle's
> writing
> >>> that LSV himself attributes the concept, in the Psychology of Art.
> >>> Catharsis for the Greeks was "a sudden emotional breakdown or climax
> that
> >>> constitutes overwhelming feelings of great pity, sorrow, laughter, or
> any
> >>> extreme change in emotion that results in renewal, restoration, and
> >>> revitalization" (as Wikipedia has it).
> >>> Viacheslav Ivanov, who LSV refers to in the Psych of Art, considered
> >>> catharsis (a la Aristotle) to be the way a novel, for example, grips
> and
> >>> affects its readers and leads them to self- knowledge. Catharsis is not
> >>> only an aesthetic affect, it is the engine of positive historical
> action.
> >>>
> >>> Vygotsky's own definition of catharsis spells out this dynamic and
> >>> transformative character in some detail, reminiscent of both Ivanov
> (though
> >>> he didn't accept Ivanov's Symbolism) and Turner on Dilthey. Catharsis
> is "a
> >>> complex transformation of feelings," an "affective contradiction" that
> >>> results in resolution: in short, a dialectical process on the level of
> >>> emotion. Feeling alone is not sufficient to bring about the
> psychological
> >>> transformation that Vygotsky is interested in; it is the work of art
> that
> >>> has the power to initiate "the creative act of overcoming the feeling,
> >>> resolving it, conquering it."
> >>> Martin
> >>>
> >>> On Mar 2, 2013, at 4:13 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> Re boundaries of experience and Dewey. In his book on education and
> >>>> experience he quotes "the poet" in a relevant way
> >>>>
> >>>> I am a part of all that I have met;
> >>>> Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
> >>>> Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
> >>>> For ever and for ever when I move.
> >>>>
> >>>> The poet was Tennyson, the *I*, Ulysses.
> >>>>
> >>>> mike
> >>>>
> >>>> On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 8:50 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> Mike,
> >>>>> I find this topic very fertile ground which may need to be
> *reworked*.
> >>>>> Robert mentioned Dewey was criticized for not having an
> understanding of
> >>>>> the *tragic soul*   Andy mentioned that an experienced must be
> >>>>> *bounded*.
> >>>>> I would like to add further reflections from Tom Leddy's article you
> >>>>> attached on Dewey's Aesthetics. I am referring to page 34 & 35 where
> >>>>> Dewey
> >>>>> is exploring the common substance of the Arts. This section is a
> >>>>> response
> >>>>> to the *tragic soul* and *bounded* experience.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The creative process BEGINS with a "total seizure", a "mood", which
> >>>>> determines the development of art into parts.  THIS *element* Dewey
> >>>>> refers
> >>>>> to as a *penetrating quality* which is immediately experienced in all
> >>>>> parts
> >>>>> of the work. It is so pervasive we take it for granted. Without this
> >>>>> penetrating quality the parts would only be mechanically related.
>  The
> >>>>> organic whole IS the parts PERMEATED by this penetrating quality. It
> >>>>> may be
> >>>>> called the SPIRIT of the work. It is also the work's *reality* in
> that
> >>>>> it
> >>>>> makes us experience the work AS *real*  This penetrating quality is
> the
> >>>>> BACKGOUND that qualifies everything in the foreground.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> What are the *boundaries* of this background which Dewey calls *the
> >>>>> setting*?  Dewey's answer is thought provoking. He assumes that
> although
> >>>>> experiences have bounded edges like those of their objects, the
> whole of
> >>>>> *an* experience, and especially its qualitative penetrating *spirit*
> >>>>> within
> >>>>> the object, EXTENDS INDEFINITELY. This penetrating quality of the
> >>>>> experience is THAT which is not focused within the experience.  The
> >>>>> margins
> >>>>> of our experience shade into that indefinate expanse.  This
> experiential
> >>>>> penetrating backgound is only made CONSCIOUS within the specific
> objects
> >>>>> that form the focus.  Behind every explicit experience there is
> >>>>> something
> >>>>> implicit that we call *vague* but this vagueness was not vague in the
> >>>>> ORIGINAL experience for this penetrating quality is a FUNCTION of the
> >>>>> whole
> >>>>> *situation*  An experience *is mystical*, Dewey believes, to the
> extent
> >>>>> this feeling of a penetrating background is INTENSE. This penetrating
> >>>>> quality is particularly intense in certain works of art, for example
> IN
> >>>>> TRAGEDY.  A work of art must include something not understood.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I am not sure if Vygotsky shares a *family resemblance* with this
> >>>>> expansive, penetrating sense of *substance* which makes reality FEEL
> >>>>> *real*. The question of the boundedness of *an* experience, from
> Dewey's
> >>>>> understanding certainly was reflecting on the *tragic soul* within
> >>>>> *settings*.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Larry
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 9:17 AM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> It all moves so quickly it is hard to take it all in, Larry, let
> alone
> >>>>>> find time to comment.I am still
> >>>>>> back on rhythmicity which I am thinking of from the perspective of
> >>>>>> someone who thinks of
> >>>>>> communication as patterns of coordination over time.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> In this regard, it seems to me that many of Durkheim's ideas in
> >>>>>> Elementary Forms of Religious
> >>>>>> Experience are highly relevant. Durkheim's pluses and minuses are, I
> >>>>>> know, a matter of important
> >>>>>> debate in themselves, but they come down to me through my engagement
> >>>>>> with
> >>>>>> cross cultural
> >>>>>> research through Levy-Bruhl and Piaget.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> And now, toss in the Bakhtin (the liar or the seer) and it should be
> >>>>>> enough to think about when we are being absent minded.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> mike
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 8:43 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com
> >>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Mike,
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> This months themed issue linking felt experience with Bahktin's
> notion
> >>>>>>> of genre's and cultural-historical-activity theory wiil keep the
> >>>>>>> current
> >>>>>>> dialgue with Dewey alive.
> >>>>>>> I'm anticipating a lively encounter.
> >>>>>>> Larry
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 8:20 AM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> >>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> We will be re-posting the articles for discussion poll a little
> later
> >>>>>>>> this
> >>>>>>>> morning and
> >>>>>>>> restarting the balloting so that the full menu is out there for
> >>>>>>>> people
> >>>>>>>> to
> >>>>>>>> read
> >>>>>>>> AND COMMENT ON!
> >>>>>>>> :-)
> >>>>>>>> mike
> >>>>>>>> ______________________________**____________
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> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
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> >> --
> >> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
> >> ------------
> >> *Andy Blunden*
> >> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
> >> Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts
> >> http://marxists.academia.edu/**AndyBlunden<
> http://marxists.academia.edu/AndyBlunden>
> >>
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