xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>Judy-- I would like to follow the thread of your and dianne's notes
>which views subjectivity as the lived experience of events. Under what
>conditions can we know the lived
experience
> of another person about
>anything?
hi mike -
i guess this is where i say, "aye, there's the rub..." because in my
understanding of subjectivity, there is no way to "really" _know_ the
lived experience of another person, partly because we rarely fully
understand ourselves about our own subjectivity, the depths of our own
lived experience is often muddled, partially repressed, - the best we can
hope to learn about is what is _was like_ for another -
this is so different from "knowing the lived experience of another..."
learning about "what it was _like_" provides us with metaphors, similes,
allusions, comparisons, but as subjectively selected efforts, these, too,
can often reflect kinds of repressions, memory, fear, guilt, and so on.
>
>As I recall, Dianne's note mentions the verbal expression of that lived
>experience as the source of data. The issue that is vexing me is that
>I intuitively have understood subjectivity in the writings of
>anthropologists,
>say, to mean what you and Diane say. But I am totally unclear about what
>constitute acceptable warrants for making claims about someone's
>subjectivity,
>even one's own.
again, that's the problem, for me, this is why i have never been able to
do any kind of ethnography or research involving 'others' because i hardly
know where i end and others begin - that's my narcissism, i'm sure. heh
heh - but truth is,
i reckon a lot of researchers of others have lurking narcissistic
tendencies, and are thus able to perform in the guise of
knowing others when perhaps really we are just imagining a lot of what we
need, wish for, and so on.
the verbal sources of data are problematic of course, because inflection
and gesture say as much as a pause or a deflection, the incomplete
sentence is more profound than the perfected description,
but it is the very incompleteness of it that is the site of creation and
invention on the part of the researcher, trying to "know" what others mean
by what they say, and so on.
>
>I feel as if Danzinger's book on the early history of psychology in which
>people introspecting came to be called subjects is relevant here, and
>there
>MUST be some textbook which discusses this issue in anth or soc or
>critical
>psych (Walkerdine?) but have been unable to put my hands on such a
>discussion.
>
>mike
well, psychology, the "science" if inferring mindful events on the basis
of observed behavior.
hm. that's always been slippery to me too.
there are a thousand and one ways to interpret subjectivity, depending on
your discipline and intention.
ethnographers have the most creative interpretations because they need to
master the problem of what is unknowable about others -
not to say they're right or wrong, but that they have the most to gain by
explaining it all in some way that suggests
access.
methoughts,
diane
************************************************************************************
"Things do not change: people change."
Henry David Thoreau
*************************************************************************************
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
vancouver, bc
mailing address: 46 broadview avenue, pointe claire, qc, H9R 3Z2
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