Re: [xmca] Activating postmodernism

From: Mike Cole (lchcmike@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Oct 16 2005 - 09:31:38 PDT


Ricardo-- The questions you ask yourself about the Distance Education
Conference are
the same that I have been asking myself, and the members of xmca, in a
different voice.
But your words suffice, with a few "translations":

"Why people do not stay discussing the
issues emerged in that assembly in ALN (ISCAR) environments?" asked the
blogger
owner (Oldest XMCA member) with (LITTLE) no echo. What significance has a
superficial discussion
constrained by synchronous time? What this imprisonment to face-to-face
interactions says? How an exclusion-inclusion or broader-narrow dialetics
operates in such kind of exclusively presential enterprises?

What we have seen/heard here on xmca about ISCAR is that many stimulating
issues were raised,
that it was exciting to see people in the flesh one had only seen in bytes
before. But, on the down side,
that the talks were bite-sized and dicussion almost impossible owing to time
constraints. (I would
add here, language differences where I, personallyl, was bothered by the
fact that they official language
of the conference was English and simultaneous translation was limited).

For XMCA to be a zone of mimized commodification (I would claim that total
lack of alienation and total
lack of commodification are ideal-ized states that are attainable only in
small spaces for short times- that
they serve a function akin to religion in Niehbuhr's statement posted
earlier) people must coordinate around
this (illusional) object at the same time that they coordinate with their
everyday, commodified, alienated, lives.
This appears to be very difficult for everyone. I know it is difficult for
me and I am in a brief moment in life
where I do not have small children to care for, where bad health is not
overwhelming, where I have resources
far beyond those you -- and many others on xmca-- have, where I have a
secure job and enough money. So
I am very-conscious of how difficult it is BOTH to get the money/time/space
in life to go to a conference like
ISCAR, how pleasurable such an event can be for those who get there, and how
fleeting that brief moment
of coordination can be. And how difficult access to xmca is for many.

I have not responded to your messages about therapy because I have little
knowledge of the topic and I am aware
that others on XMCA have direct experience wtih this kind of practice. My
only contribution was to recommend the
paper by Lawrence Lopes and give its url. So far as I know, only one person
read that paper and commented on it
only to me, not back to XMCA.

I do not think the silence you are encountering is the consequence of
competition in size of genetalia, of either sex.

Nor do I believe, on the basis of some 20 years of engaging in xlchc/xmca
that extended self-examination will solve
the problem. In this case, communicative action directed at the common
object of xmca, which I might characterize
in the context you have provided as "decomodified/de-alienated joint
disourse on the topic of culture, society, and development,"
is likely to most productive.

Unfortunately, if past is prelude to the future, the situation will not
change. There will be times of genuine, mutual-growth-
enhancing discussion, and times when messages go unanswered. I would direct
your attention to the message sent by
Mabel Encinas 6 days ago which I have been trying to find time to answer
properly as an example of an important attempt
at communication that has gone, so far, unaswered. But then note that Mabel,
herself, was responding to a message sent
3 months earlier. This example indicates that there is heterochrony in XMCA
that makes this medium seriously A-synchronous,
even if it is synchronous relative to the time it took Cortes to send a
message from the "new" world to Granada.

Tenha um dia maravilhoso
(as we flakey californians are wont to say)
mike

On 10/15/05, Ricardo Japiassu <rjapias@uol.com.br> wrote:
>
> I ask u please to forgive me if these messages on activating postmodernism
> are overpacking your e-mail box, but this is a way I have to figure out –
> although in a primitive and rough fashion – some ideas.
>
>
>
> I read some days ago in a blog about last DE congress, held in
> Florianópolis-SC (a state in the southeast region of Brasil), that the
> fact
> of that congress – on distance education - only had happen in a
> synchronous
> timing was a "crying" contradiction. "Why people do not stay discussing
> the
> issues emerged in that assembly in ALN environments?" asked the blogger
> owner with no echo. What significance has a superficial discussion
> constrained by synchronous time? What this imprisonment to face-to-face
> interactions says? How an exclusion-inclusion or broader-narrow dialetics
> operates in such kind of exclusively presential enterprises?
>
>
>
> Questions to be equated or, if u prefer, pre-texts to discoursive plays…
>
>
>
> But, as I was saying at the head of this post, this is a way to put in
> words
> some thoughts, to share them. Now, I catch myself thinking in Holzman's
> words on alienation in her draft paper:
>
>
>
>
>
> "If, following Marx, we are commodified and alienated individuals, then
> transformative social change would entail the de-commodification and
> de-alienation of the "human products"—a positive and constructive process
> of
> producing sociality. Vygotsky's social-cultural psychology, a psychology
> of
> being and becoming, can be employed (as it has in social therapy) to
> de-commodify and de-alienate, through a deconstruction-reconstruction of
> the
> ontology of modernist psychology in which human beings are understood to
> be
> only who we are. In social therapy's process ontology, human beings are
> both
> who we are and who we are becoming. And who we are becoming are creators
> of
> tools that can continuously transform mundane specific life practices
> (including those that produce alienation) into new forms of life. Creating
> these new kinds of tools is the becoming activity of creating/giving
> expression to our sociality." (p.17)
>
>
>
>
>
> I'm not ashamed of "outing" what I am and what I'm becoming. I do not care
> if you have a bigger "cock" or a larger "ass", even a jaguar fast leaving
> your garage at early morning with lights on. :-)
>
> I'm not perfect - same you are not too.
>
> I'm becoming and you too.
>
> I want to be happy
>
> - and to be happy, to me, righ now, is a de-commodifying relation with
> knowledge and people and culture and society and politics and so on ...
>
>
>
> Well,
>
> - after this rude brainstorming let me come back arms to sholder –
>
>
>
> I read also in that blog, refered here above, a post of a foreign
> professor
> invited to give a lecture in the congress. It was not written in a perfect
> Portuguese – and the blogger said that the professor asked he himself to
> post his message. I love it. Because although his message was not so
> perfect
> as if it would be posted by an academic translator it has its own value –
> the fact of be something original, singular, with his "chest". – Hello...
> nothing against translators, please!
>
>
>
> We could be more generous and relate ourselves to commodifying fetichism
> as
> well as to a de-objectifing transaction with people around.
>
>
>
> I am giving classes to 4 groups in graduation – each one with 50 students
> -
> in a public institution of country zone of Bahia. No research, people
> onling
> running after their diplomas.There´s no microphone, no data-show, only a
> white board and no money to get Xerox or to print documents… Only six
> computer to all professors and students… I hate left home and go there to
> legitimate such a degradant pedagogic enterprise. But Brazilian economy
> goes
> very well – says President Lula.
>
>
>
> Give-me a break!
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Ricardo Japiassu
>
> Professor Adjunto
>
>
>
>
>
> UNIVERSIDADE DO ESTADO DA BAHIA-UNEB
>
> Departamento de Educação/Campus XV - Valença/Ba
>
> Rua do Arame, s/n
>
> Tento - Valença
>
> 45400-000 BAHIA
>
> Brasil
>
>
>
> Ambiente virtual:
>
> http://www.ricardojapiassu.pro.br
>
> Correio eletrônico:
>
> rjapiassu@uneb.br
>
> rjapias@uol.com.br
>
> rjapias@yahoo.com.br
>
> Celular:
>
> (71) 88413296
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>
>
>

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