The variuos metacommentaries and rememberings about xmca evoke more
responses than my limited capacities can handle all at once, but a few
quick associations and comments.
-- Arne Raeithel drove several people off xlchc because they thoguht
him to lecturish. They took his long and detailed messages as the imposition
of power and deliberate silencing of other voices. Others have left because
other participants' have been interpreted in similar ways. Others have left
because they viewed responses to their postings as insulting and resented
the fact that list members did not rise to their defence.
Almost never did I share the interpretations of those who reacted this way,
but mourned the loss of their voices. Thanks to the efforts of Eva, Christoff,
Bill Blanton, and others, we hope to be able to have special issue of
MCA devoted to Arne's work. In memory he turned out not to be the bad
person several people constructed him as. Maybe the same is true of
others?
-- My guess about a more useful sign on procedure is that we use our web
page, that each membership entry have a self description attached, but that
it be a matter of members' discretion as to whether and when they want to
read them. I personally would love to have new members sign on with a
self description that went to everyone just so we have some idea of who
is around, but the persistence of feeling of intimidation (which has been
there from the beginning) probably make that unfeasible. It is not unfeasible
for someone to welcome newcomers. I think collectively we could see to that.
--- A LOT has changed in recent years along many dimensions that affects
the nature of xmca discussions. Some old timers tired of topics circulating
without sufficient memory so things seemed repititious. Our once "forbidden"
topic has become far closer to the mainstream. There are many fora for
discussions similar to the one's we carry on here. Etc.
-- I like Eva's suggestion re reading of Laszlo's paper in conjunction with
the whole notion of a crisis in psychology, becuase so far as I can tell,
that crisis remains in full force today as it did 75 years ago when it was
written about by Vygotsky, Buhler, and others. It raises in a pointed way
CHAT's relationship to psychology and the modernist division of intellectual
labor, and it brings Laszlo into the discussion. We have not heard a lot from
our Hungarian colleagues recently.
-- Re my note in response to Phillip about cultural filters. It occurred to
me that a lot of the details about how we tried to work in the '70's and
80's relevant to the issues he raises can be found on our lchc.ucsd.edu
web page in the history/archive section in the 1984 report to the Carneige
corporation. For those who think the issue worth pursuing.
mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 01:02:12 PDT