Dear Mike and everybody-
Sorry, Mike, for changing the discussion thread (well, it has been changed
even before me) but your last paragraph made me think in another direction.
Mike wrote,
> I find it fascinating that Bakhtin is used by many to bridge between
> Vygotskian dyadic events and larger social context when Bakhtin's
materials
> are drawn so largely from literature while so many of us study "texts"
that
> are constructed before our eyes. The nature of the data must influence
> the analysis, but the topic is often not addressed. The use of literary
> material in LSV's writings has had a powerful effect on me. It was
considered
> absolutely inappropriate by the people with whom I studied.
I think treating Life as Text (I used singularity to emphasized the concepts
themselves rather than their empirical legitimate plurality) is a very
fruitful metaphor which, although, has its limitations that can be easily
overlooked due to textual (if not paper) nature of academic practice and
Western obsession with literacy in general. Like Mike, I share fascination
of how much we can borrow from literary analysis to study life phenomena
since literary work like social sciences deal with recognizing life and
recognized life. I agree with Mike about legitimacy of use of literary
materials by LSV (and Freud before him). We should be thankful literary
analysis for revealing issues of meaning, ideology, voice, heteroglossia,
dialogicity, and many other useful notions and phenomena.
However (and my However is directed not to Mike but to a broader academic
community), I think that our methodological reflections are too much focus
on data analysis and not on data construction, data synthesis as well as
text medium of research. The final product of research is currently a paper.
It is true that we start working more and more with video data and video
analysis but our final goal is to translate this video data and analysis
into text. There is an unchecked assumption that any human phenomena and its
analysis can be textualized at least in principle. There is even a bigger
assumption about inscription (the assumption is "bigger" because inscription
can be done also within use of text like with use of videotaping) that that
any human phenomena and its analysis can be inscribed at least in principle.
Let me list some of limitations of "text flow" as I compare it with "life
flow":
1) Unlike text, life flow does not only have multiple and unlimited
authorship but also essential non-authorship (things just happen).
2) Unlike text, life flow is never stable, can't a thing (a "black box" in
Latour's sense).
3) Unlike text, life always involves people in multiple, simultaneous, and
nonlinear processes (unlike reading a text);
4) Unlike text, life flow is directly affected and shaped by any form of
participation (this is Socrates' complaint that text can't talk back to
reader's questions)
5) Unlike life, text always gravitates to a certain genre and message and
story (Russian poet Tutchev articulated this point in the following verse,
"Thought articulated in words is a lie" "Mysl' izrechennaya est' lozh")
6) Unlike text, life flow is affected by future events and never finished.
7) Unlike text, life flow is essentially multi- and supra-modal (non-verbal
and non-textual).
Following Mike's call to involve literary analysis in social study research,
I'd like to say that exactly because we, academicians, are so text-based and
exactly because our Western culture is so literacy-based, we should focus on
literary analysis and its limitation. I think Mike's critics that he
described in his message are like fish that is not aware of water.
I also think that we should promote experimentation in media of reporting
our research (specifically using non-text media or differently genred text
media), inscription, and non-inscriptive research in academia.
What do you think?
Eugene
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Cole [mailto:mcole@weber.ucsd.edu]
> Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 10:29 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: RE: synomorphs in Gerglish
>
> Eugene-- Aren't every day events dramatic performances of all involved? I
> know we can make distinctions -- participating in a national spelling bee
> is not doing your homework-- but the dramatic metaphor seems a powerful
> conceptual tool quite generally.
>
> I find it fascinating that Bakhtin is used by many to bridge between
> Vygotskian dyadic events and larger social context when Bakhtin's
materials
> are drawn so largely from literature while so many of us study "texts"
that
> are constructed before our eyes. The nature of the data must influence
> the analysis, but the topic is often not addressed. The use of literary
> material in LSV's writings has had a powerful effect on me. It was
considered
> absolutely inappropriate by the people with whom I studied.
> mike
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