I quite agree with the general point Eugene is making about qualitative
differences in the meaning that different time-periods can have for us in
different activity contexts. One of the directions of my own work is to try
to start from the quantitative differences in timescales and see how these
matter to our ways of acting and feeling, the kinds of meanings we make. My
interest though takes me across a wider range of timescales than those that
are normally perceived as durations by individual people ... both shorter
(timescales of neurological processes) and longer (decades, centuries) to
historical timescales.
There are many qualitative aspects of time in activity: pacing and
(subjective) duration, urgency or laxity, acceleration/slowing relative to
some baseline sense of the flow of events, repetitiveness, continuity or
intermittency, etc.
A lot more to be said on this, perhaps as I respond to some later messages.
JAY.
At 08:53 PM 7/28/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>Dear Jay and everybody-
>
>I think that the idea of multiple times is bigger than multiple temporal
>scales (although it is also a very important idea!). Let me elaborate.
>Multiple temporal scale idea implies that the time is qualitatively the same
>but quantitatively different. For example, Vygotsky's notion of
>phylogenesis, ontogenesis, and so on seems to be based on physical time as
>the quality of time. However, semiotically based time like, for example,
>didactic time in traditional schooling does not have the same quality as
>physical time. Didactic time in traditional school is about unfolding
>didactic events like covering academic curricula, filling the students with
>knowledge, and developing institutional label-identities like "slow
>learner", "advanced learner", "accelerated program". The units of didactic
>times in traditional school are lessons, periods, units, terms, semesters,
>quarters, grades (like 2nd, 3rd), schools (like Elementary school, High
>school). Although these units of institutional didactic time related to
>physical time, they are not the same. For example, the same one-hour lesson
>of quantum physics for 5th graders is "acceleration" while for physics
>graduate students it is "pulling back". Note that time categories of
>"acceleration" and "pulling back" have instructional-didactic semiotic and
>axiological (value-based) qualities rather than physical ones.
>
>What do you think?
>
>Eugene
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Jay Lemke [mailto:jaylemke@umich.edu]
> > Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 3:43 PM
> > To: XMCA LISTGROUP
> > Subject: chronotopes
> >
> >
> > I am actually getting very excited now about the possibilities of
>extending
> > the notion of chronotope to make it even more useful as a key organizing
> > concept for characterizing activity in a sociocultural framework.
> >
> > Just in the last few days, in correspondence with Kevin Leander, and
> > thinking about some of our discussion here, I am beginning to see ways to
> > bring together the notions of multiple timescales of activity, the role of
> > differentiated, meaningful spatiality, and the way we feel as make our
> > traversals through lifespaces (and virtual multimedia worlds, including
>the
> > web and many online media).
> >
> > Let me give my sense of chronotope, starting from its Bakhtinian
> > inspiration, and then developing it just a bit further.
> >
> > I do not think that B. meant chronotope merely as a more specific focus on
> > the context of action in the novel. Rather, its origin lies perhaps closer
> > to the notion of genre, or the classical rhetorical notion of the "topos".
> > Topos in Greek means "place", but in rhetoric it acquired the sense of
> > "common-place", i.e some shared way of making meaning that an orator could
> > count on his audience being familiar with. Topoi can be figures of speech,
> > grand analogies, well-known stories, etc. The notions of genre that B.
> > would have inherited in the traditions of east european stylistics
> > (famously Propp's work on Russian fairy-tales) had a sense that a
> > particular kind of writing (or also speech genre in B.) followed a
> > predictable trajectory (e.g. introduction of time, place and characters;
> > initial situation; complicating events; help in overcoming obstacles
>toward
> > a goal; climax and resolution; final state of affairs), and that different
> > genres mobilized the resources of narrative and language to produce
> > different sorts of trajectories.
> >
> > The chronotope is a specification of certain key aspects of a genre
> > trajectory: the typical expectations that in certain kinds of places, at
> > certain sorts of times, people in the narrative will engage in activities
> > of particular kinds that will move them along a relatively familiar kind
>of
> > trajectory. B. makes chronotope somewhat more abstract than this because
>he
> > is interested in historical changes in the forms of narrative trajectories
> > in the novel, and so he comes to some rather general ways of
>characterizing
> > how authors in different periods, writing different kinds of novels (or
> > precursors of novels) put time and space together as expectable ways that
> > action can unfold.
> >
> > Many of you may be familiar with Aristotle's famous dictum from the
> > _Poetics_ that a classical Greek tragedy should have a unity of time and
> > place. In fact the action was supposed to take place in one town on one
> > day, between sunrise and sunset. Bakhtin sets out to classify and analyze
> > novelistic genres according to such simple matters as whether they are
> > supposed to take place in only a few familiar locales or range widely
> > across many exotic ones, and whether they take place over short periods of
> > time or epic, multi-generational scope. But he takes this much further,
> > considering every aspect of the writing that creates a sense of time and
> > place, and movement across places, and the pacing and vicissitudes of
>time.
> > His ultimate interest, however, is how the different historical genres use
> > their constructions of time and place to define a view of human nature
> > through the kinds of actions people take on their trajectories through the
> > space-time of the novel.
> >
> > How do novelists tell us about people, about ourselves, about our feelings
> > and values, our beliefs and actions by situating us in places and times
>and
> > following our interesecting lifepaths, with their typical and unique
> > rhythms, cycles, pacings, and unpredictable accelerations and doldrums? In
> > trying to answer this question B. uses the notion of the chronotope: (a)
>to
> > indicate the unity of space/place and time/pace in the creation of a
> > fictional world, and (b) to characterize typical genres and unique
> > variations in the ways in which human action and feeling is revealed
> > through trajectories across space-time.
> >
> > I would caution against too close comparison with Einstein's space-time.
>B.
> > himself says he's appropriating the term mostly as a metaphor, and the key
> > element in common is probably just the notion that one has to consider
> > space and time as intimately interrelated, as two aspects of the same
> > phenomenon. But B's "time-space" (as the translators wisely put it to
> > distance the term a bit from Einstein's) is also explicitly not Kantian,
> > not an a priori; it is a careful narrative construction.
> >
> > As I've written here often enough before, I see the multiple timescales of
> > the different levels of organization of activity as a key to understanding
> > how what happens (slowly) in-the-large, at the macro-social and cultural
> > scale, affords and constrains, and is in its turn constituted out of, what
> > happens (more quickly) in-the-small, at the scale of human action and
> > interaction. One important linkage across scales is provided by material
> > artifacts that have semiotic read/write-ability as well as persistence
>over
> > time (including the human body itself). But in the large, there are also,
> > for example, architectures, landscapes, and cityscapes (as the new
>critical
> > geography, e.g. D Harvey, E Soja, emphasizes) that are written upon by
> > human action and which serve as texts and contexts that afford different
> > kinds of actions for people who are differently positioned socially,
> > culturally, and historically. What affords the possibility of, and makes
> > expectations more or less likely for, a particular kind of activity, is
>not
> > just the subjects, objects, and tools (material and symbolic) that are
> > available, but also the larger architectures and landscapes, the built and
> > planted and wild ecosystems within which we act.
> >
> > Even before my interest in timescales, I was trying, along with Arne
> > Raeithel and Alfred Lang, and many others, to more effectively unite
> > considerations of evolving-developing-dynamic material-ecological-social
> > systems with accounts of the kinds of cultural meaning that get made in
> > these systems and which profoundly influence what activities are done,
> > where, how, and with what results.
> >
> > So here is the notion of the chronotope, presenting itself as an
>organizing
> > concept for characterizing not just fictional time-space worlds that
>reveal
> > human meanings and feelings in action, but also for ethnography (as in
> > Kevin Leander's MCA paper) that tries to make sense of people cross-site
> > trajectories and what kinds of activities invoke and involve various
> > placings and pacings ... and so then also for the virtual worlds,
>fictional
> > but more "evolutive" (Alfred's term) than narratives are, in which we also
> > live and create trajectories (or traversals as I've been calling them) of
> > action, meaning, and feeling.
> >
> > What are the critical ways in which space and place play a role in
> > activity? How are they united with the temporalities of activity (pacing,
> > interruption, duration, acceleration, etc.)? And how to do they play a
>role
> > in the meanings and feelings that we make along the traversals and
> > trajectories that our activities create for us and for others?
> >
> > How do they do so similarly and differently in different cultures and
> > subcultures? in different historical epochs? and according to whether they
> > do so as represented in fiction (novels, films), as enacted in daily life,
> > or as created in our interaction with virtual worlds presented by new
> > interactive technologies?
> >
> > I have some ideas about research methods to explore these questions, but
> > there is also a lot more to be done to flesh out this initial inspiration.
> > Many thanks to Kevin and xmca for catalyzing another germinal project!
> >
> > JAY.
> >
> >
> > Jay Lemke
> > Professor
> > University of Michigan
> > School of Education
> > 610 East University
> > Ann Arbor, MI 48104
> >
> > Tel. 734-763-9276
> > Email. JayLemke@UMich.edu
> > Website. www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
Jay Lemke
Professor
University of Michigan
School of Education
610 East University
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Tel. 734-763-9276
Email. JayLemke@UMich.edu
Website. www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
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