Re: [xmca] Banana Mediated Emotions

Hi David and Andy and Paul,
as I was riding my bike to the dentist, I was thinking that you were
perhaps not reading my piece in the way I intended. I am thinking
about activity in terms of the three levels, and have written
repeatedly about how they mutually constitute each other. I proposed
a scheme a little like this:

activity (motive)
> sense
action (goal) > meaning
> reference
operation (condition)

where sense, reference, and meaning are dialectical relations.
Meaning, therefore, is enacted integrally within activity, where
actions are dialectically related both to activity and to operations
(for which they serve as referents).

We know this to be the case, because in the reproduction of power
relations, for example, which is a symbolic issue, we can get all
upset about injustice and so on. But being upset is related to
experienced physiological changes, sweat, hard pounding, etc. over
which we don't have control.

Conversely, our physiological state that underlie emotions we
experience, mediate what we do, how we do, decisions we make, etc,
all of which mark sense within sociocultural and cultural-historical
contexts.

So I don't think I am reductionist, far from it. I understand myself
as implementing and developing Vygotsky's work by radically sticking
to his dialectical program-----and it is this dialectical program
that gets almost completely neglected and washed away in Western
scholarship. I feel as if it is not me being reductionist but others
who only talk about meaning or only about physiological states, and
about all of these independent of the cultural-historical forms of
activity, and independent of societal life which comes to be
preserved in and through the lives we lead.

Cheers,

Michael
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
Received on Thu Jul 26 10:31 PDT 2007