As you both will have noticed my attempt to clarify what is the
"counterprocess" of multilogue was very half-baked: something I formulated
in THOSE terms for the first time when writing the posting -- within the
fifteen minutes or so before hitting the send button. And turning about in
the middle of it, moreover, when I realized that my first attempt at
explanation was less an explanation of the multilogical process itself as
"independently existent" (which was what I had been using it for in what
Genevieve asked about, in the second paper, the one with the link maps) --
than of the "semiotic material" we spend our multilogical reading and
writing time in belaboring (which I write about in the first paper, the one
with the Engestr=F6m triangles, as the Object of Multilogue).
So when At 15.43 +0000 99-09-15, Judy Diamondstone asked:
>Surely, I thought, they must be interactive -- the stubborn entrenchments o=
f
>the discourses we're struggling to transform and those persistent waves of
>kinds of messaging. Is this interaction what you are chewing on, Eva?
-- yes. And I have a nagging feeling that what I want to capture in words
is still slipping through the mesh.
Like Judy I had some difficulties in understanding your posting, Paul. On
the one hand what you are doing with "cultural capital" (which possibly
just has too much remaining flavor of the modes of invocation criticized by
Jan Nespor. Diverts my attention....) and on the other hand which of my
papers you are reading my clarifications against... But -- I'm running out
of hands here -- I don't disagree with your take on Raeithel's
"counterprocess" as an activating re-cast of Leont'ev's object-of-activity.
So I'm flickering between understanding and puzzlement.
The other day I was actually about to apologize to Nate for my quirky
association to the "cultural capital" he had mentioned (and flippantly
formulating it as a question) -- I was writing, then, about the
considerable investment of writing time it might take to start getting
visible payoff in attention from other message contributors. And thought:
writing time as capital. Having the sort of time it takes, WILL be an
important point of exchange between the social division of labor internally
in the mailinglist system and the social divisions of labor in the systems
demanding the greater part of our time. Also: putting the appropriate
vocabulary in the appropriate kind of motion takes a particular kind of
time. And as a thread goes on, the more "expensive" it gets to add another
flourish to the multilogue... to add something NEW and relevant. This is
the "me too" effect: when we have read a number of postings on a given
thread, we find nothing to add -- and I agree, Barb: why post a message
that just says "me too" in so many words. On the other hand, one advantage
with this medium is that there IS a "time-shadow" within which multiple
writers may be (and will be) producing their contributions to the same
thread, without overhearing each other. Voicing, sometimes, very similar
ideas and experiences, but with variations adding "thickness" to the
description. But perhaps it IS really necessary not to have read the other
messages to be able to do this.
What do you think?
Eva