Re: [xmca] subjectivity question

From: Mike Cole (lchcmike@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Nov 11 2005 - 17:05:10 PST


Well, I have ordered the Butler book that Mary recommends, a book by Mark
Turner
called *The literary mind* and a book by Turner and Fouconier on blended
spaces as
fun time reading. All of this motivated by a combination of the current
discussion and
an upcoming grad class on mediational theories of mind.

I can't square my reading of the trajectory of Vygotsky's thought with
yours, Mary. You
write, " LSV started off on the right track in
his work on semiotics, and then got derailed by mentalistic traditions."
Seems to me
backwards. Probably the trajectory is probably not important, but the
distinction between semiotics
and "mentalistic traditions" is.

Nor would I want to be seen as defending psychology. I did not leave
psychology to create a Communication
department where mediation is the central concept by accident. Nor would I
think it useful to over-identify
CHAT, which seems to me necessarily interdisciplinary as that term is usual
understood, with psychology.

What I have been asking about is the warrants for inferences concerning
others' thoughts, feelings, ........
"subjectivitiies." Not THE ONE CORRECT WARRANT, but the warrants given
specific foci of interest, phenomena
in the world we are trying to understand.

I greatly appreciate the education you are all providing me. Local
circumstances really force me to minimize my involvement
with XMCA for the next several weeks, so if you see me posting, it is a sign
of my weakness/fondness for what it provides. I
strongly recommend that if you have not done so, visit the xmca website and
check out that map of where in the world people
are logging into this community from. Think of what it means and how we can
become more genuinely international, which, among
other things, means more accepting of, welcoming of, views expressed in
languages other than English and intellectual traditions
that are struggling to be heard.

Hasta pronto
Do skorovo svidaniya
&
that sort of signoff.
mike
On 11/11/05, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
>
> Thanks for that Mary.
> I have read Lois McNay on Foucault, and I liked her a lot, and it was
> there that I did learn that in his latter days Foucault changed his
> mind about the subject and introduced the subject into his thinking. I
> found that material very useful actually, but I was really surprised
> when I read McNay, because no other Foucault critic seems to use that
> part of Foucault. For example, Nancy Fraser, who I also rate very
> highly, criticises Foucault for not having an ethical theory, but
> Nancy Fraser's weak side, if any, is also objectivism.
> As for Judith Butler, I confess I have only read a couple of her books
> and one or two by her "followers" and perhaps I have missed something
> there. Martin certainly seems to think so.I will get hold of "Giving
> an Account of Oneself" as soon as I can and investigate.
> Thanks again for that Mary,
> Andy
> At 09:12 AM 11/11/2005 -0800, you wrote:
>
> >> Poststructuralists claim to have "deconstructed the subject",
> for them
> >> it is an illusion.
> Actually, I recommended three texts that are post-structural and
> not
> deconstructionist in their methodology. Late-career Foucault and
> current
> Butler do not take as their target the deconstruction of the
> subject at all.
> In the Butler text, and also Cavarero, the authors provide very
> comprehensive analyses of the major philosophical perspectives for
> thinking
> about subject-object relations, and there are minor, but not
> insignificant
> overlaps with what concerns most CHAT citizens ---
> inter-subjectivities. And
> there are overlaps in literature, which I sometimes think is most
> profitably
> sought in the literature from psychoanalysis on object relations --
> a good
> chunk of the Butler text looks at this literature.
> I was thinking about all of this yesterday -- the way in which we
> are
> speaking different languages in this community <as in any other
> community>
> such that by the time one message gets across the great divide,
> almost all
> the meaning is lost. It seems a very potent difference to note that
> for some
> of us -- like, me, for example -- psychology is not about "mental
> processes", and if I am to talk at all about psychology, then it is
> to be
> interested in the ways in which scholarly traditions endeavor to
> provide an
> account of interiority that is rich enough and complex enough to be
> situated
> in a context of geographic, historical, chronological <at minimum>
> flux. And
> this actually, is where I find that LSV started off on the right
> track in
> his work on semiotics, and then got derailed by mentalistic
> traditions
> which, likely because of his very early death, never got back on
> track. So
> for me, Bakhtin is more helpful, when I am looking back to
> foundational
> texts.
> Mary
> _______________________________________________
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>
> Andy Blunden, on behalf of the Victorian Peace Network, Phone (+61)
> 03-9380 9435
> Alexander Surmava's Tour - September/October 2006
> [2]http://ethicalpolitics.org[3]/alexander-surmava/index.htm
>
> References
>
> 1. http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> 2. http://ethicalpolitics.org/alexander-surmava/index.htm
> 3. http://ethicalpolitics.org/alexander-surmava/index.htm
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