This thread started with Ana's remark:
[02:16 27.6.1996, Ana M. Shane:]
>By the way - Vygotsky also wrote ... something I puzzle over
>for years: He said: "I believe that play is not symbolic action in the
>proper sense of the term, so it becomes essential to show the role of
>motivation in play" (Mind in Society, p 94). As for "symbolic action in the
>proper sense" I believe he meant **system of signs that generalize
>reality... like algebra**.
>I just puzzle over that, because, most of the time, even when we take the
>motivation into account, we usually think of play as symbolic activity.
Let's make a distinction between (a) stretches of freely invented playing
and (b) re-doing another variant of a well-known rule-bound play. Only
in the last type we have clear symbols for the different states of the
ongoing game. << Symbols in the sense of Peirce, namely signs that refer
to their object by "conventions" of the respective community of practice,
and not by pointing indexically or showing iconic likeness to the object >>.
Only then can we speak of play as symbolic activity, I believe.
How are the symbols produced in the first place? As Rolfe Windward has
put it, they are outcomes of mimesis in action. Mimesis is an ur-form of
communication insofar as it refers by pure iconic relationships: my
present action has a dramatic, sense-filled likeness to all other
type-identical actions of (non-specified, general) human beings.
There is no need for a convention because we are all of the same kind
by birth. Free play of type (a) depends on co-mimesis, and doesn't even
need talking to flow. Of course, usually it helps to talk *about* what's
going on (indexical function).
A certain mimetic sign is turned into a symbol when replaying the same
pattern and using it as the way-sign of the forking possibilities of
continuation. Think of the gesture of tipping one's hat(head) to set a
train into motion, or croaching suddenly as symbol of upcoming danger
(this would be a natural symbol, it's also iconic to the hiding action).
Judy goes on and points to other conceptions of mimesis:
>Michael Taussig treats mimesis as magic - my first encounter
>with the idea of it.
This relies on a *perceptual* mimetic trick: Learn how to act like the
object you want to influence via magic, then mimic this action to make
it work as if it were an action *of* the object. In the technical world,
this is not magic, but the usual trickery (Hegel) of making nature
work for us.
>... Donald Mercer treats mimesis in some
>phylogenetic scheme as a pre-linguistic mapping of the
>body-in-space (was this a resource for you?).
Judy: I know only of Merlin Donald's work(*); can you give me the ref to
Donald Mercer ? My own theory of the importance of "co-mimetic teaching"
in the evolution of humankind was published in MCA 1 (1/2), 1994.
Co-mimesis works as "an attraction to _the same_" as well as an attraction
to the complementary pole in some multipolar (horizon-like) realm of
action possibilities.
So, on the one hand we have:
>- That comfortable aspect of love that, minus play, turns couples
>into doubles of the same (you know, where couples seem to look alike).
On the other hand we have that curiously "sociosyncratic" division of
labour that old couples also have.
I wish I had more time for writing about this...
Arne.
(*) Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the Modern Mind. Three stages in
the evolution of culture and cogntion. Harvard U Press.
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