At 14.35 +0000 0-03-10, Julian Williams scrobe:
>As Saxe has pointed out, hearing and interpreting a language
>are quite different of course.... just as seeing a traffic light and
>knowing its social function are different.
>
>Am I gettiong off the point?
Hi Julian
It would be hard to get off the point -- xmca discussions usually have as
many different points as a porcupine, and this one mostly started from my
enthusiasm with Kuusisto's description of his life as a dog (did I mention
he was almost 40 before he admitted to himself he needed to come out of the
closet and show his surroundings that his vision was gravely impaired, most
of the book is about his years of passing) -- and my association to the
commonplace example of the blind woman and her dog, as used by Bateson to
ask the question where's the boundary between me and my environment. This
is an example that has circulated over the Xlists in similar-but-different
contexts many times... so perhaps I am making another point that is off the
point, even a very obtuse wondering about how a mailinglist remembers (if
at all).
Sixteen months ago Kevin Leander sent the posting below. It went without
uptake, because it happened to coincide with a major gremlin disaster at
weber, that left only a third of the subscribers on the list for almost a
week. It contains another, a lot less idyllic, story of the partnership
between blind student and seeing-eye dog.
I had forgotten that the anecdote was there, looked up the posting as the
most recently floated sample of the batesonian stick-tapping.
Eva
(rummaging around for the point that should be around here, SOMEWHERE)
From: Kevin Leander (k-leand@students.uiuc.edu)
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1998 10:57:41 -0600
Subject: sticks and dogs
This is just an short illustration I thought might be of interest to some
on the list, and doesn't directly respond to any recent threads that I'm
aware of.
I often reflect on how our understanding of mediation is tied up not with
theory in some abstract way, but with "concrete abstractions"--particular
examples and metaphors that continually shape our understandings. There
are many such metaphors and illustrations. (Maybe certain interactions are
so commonplace in writing and research that we'll eventually just refer to
them by number?)
One commonplace is Bateson's (1972) illustration of the blind man with the
stick. Where is the mental system bounded by the blind man tapping along
with the stick? Bateson responds, "The way to delineate the system is to
draw a limiting line in such a way that you do not cut any of these
pathways in ways which leave things inexplicable" (p. 459). So, if we are
explaining locomotion, then we need the "street, the stick, the man," while
if we are explaining eating, the stick is no longer relevant.
As Duranti and Goodwin remark, however, one of the limitations of such a
metaphor is that Bateson poses a world that is relatively fixed and
immuatable (1992, p. 5), whereas context is shaped, interactive,
intersubjective. This gets to my illustration--a "simple" experience while
walking across the campus yesterday:
A blind student is with his seeing eye dog into a three-sided courtyard
amidst a few buildings. The dog is stalling, seems confused, or perhaps
even playfully resistant. The student is scolding the dog loudly: "How
many times have we been to Dr. X's office and you've taken me there? Huh?
How many? (striking dog on back). Now, take me there, right now! You
take me there!" (pushing dog with foot from behind). Dog cowering, looking
about, moving forward toward one building, then shifting directions,
traversing the courtyard at an angle on the sidewalk, student following
along, continuing to talk to dog. Trees, bushes, chain along the sidewalk,
me and another student looking from opposite corners, then looking at each
other, I'm wondering what to do or if to do anything.
So how do we delineate and understand the system, when the stick is a dog?
Kevin Leander
Doctoral Student, Curriculum & Instruction
University of Illinois
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