RE: [xmca] my new questions

Hi Vesna,

I couldn't agree more--we are most able to see our ability to keep playing
with our roles in social contexts that are being organized to support
development.

Your response to me is a yes and to what I was saying. I also see people as
able to use their roles as the ongoing material for the improvisational play
that is our lives. For example, yesterday in one of my graduate classes I
asked the students to create a performance of themselves as graduate
students. They looked at me like I was crazy and said, "But we are graduate
students." I said, "I know, now I want you to do the performance of graduate
students." They created a fascinating, funny, and in many ways more
developed performance of the class. Very interesting experience for them and
me.

Carrie
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of zdravo
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 8:40 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] my new questions

Dear Carrie
I share your views regarding performance and role-playing, maybe it could be
helpful just to make inversion like we do, the role is material to play
with. Our programme is based on Vygotsky's approach to play. Some things are
seen differently when the development of the social group is unity, that
goes beyond the pattern of unique individuals or the network made by dyads.
Vesna

----- Original Message -----
From: "Carrie Lobman" <lobman@rci.rutgers.edu>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 10:58 PM
Subject: Re: [xmca] my new questions

> Dear David,
>
> I share your discomfort with "I" as the
> definition of who Carrie is. Monstrous is a really good word for it.
>
> I (but its also pretty difficult not to use it)
> find the distinction between "role-playing" and
> "performance" very helpful in understanding how I
> think about who human beings are and how we
> develop. Performance as I see it is the ongoing,
> improvisational, social creation of who we are
> becoming. When a three year old is pretending to
> be "mommy" she is not role-playing, she is
> performing. She is creatively imitating--not
> mimicking, nor is she acting out a societally
> pre-determined role. She is as I understand it
> being who she is and who she is not. That's what
> I think performance is and it is what allows for human development.
>
> Role-playing, is something different. As we grow
> older we become able, through performance
> (ironically), to play out societal
> roles--performances that were fluid and creative
> at age 4 become rigid and stultified by age 10.
> We become a certain kind of person--"the shy
> girl," the "good son." These are the roles that
> we and those around us begin relating to as our
> personality or "who we really are." In my opinion
> they are neither--but the fact that they are
> related to that way is particularly conservatizing and even monstrous.
>
> Part of why I love teaching people to improvise
> is that it re-initiates our experience of
> ourselves as performers rather than role-players.
> By creating improv scenes socially with other
> people we get a sense of what it means to be who we are and who we are
not.
>
> Hope that makes some sense--I found your
> impassioned response to personality and
> role-playing very compelling and wanted to respond.
>
> Carrie
>
> At 02:45 PM 2/9/2008, you wrote:
> >Dear Elinami,
> >
> > I'm really VERY grateful for this question,
> > but unfortunately it's not because I have
> > anything remotely resembling an answer. I It's
> > just because it allows me to post something
> > that has always puzzled me and ask other people
> > (YOU, for instance!) to comment.
> >
> > The source of my bepuzzlement is on pp.
> > 103-104 of Leontiev's book, "Activity,
> > Personality and Consciousness". It goes like this:
> >
> > "Each of us, it is understood, assumes one
> > set or another of social (for example,
> > professional) functions and, in this sense,
> > roles. The idea, however, of a direct reduction
> > of personality to a collection of roles that a
> > person fills is, notwithstanding every possible
> > reservation of the followers of this idea, one of the most monstrous."
> >
> > Yes, I suppose it is. But then the idea of a
> > personality is pretty monstrous too. Why should
> > something as complex as David Kellogg be
> > reducible to one of the two shortest words in
> > the English language? And why should it be 'I' and not 'a'? Leontiev
continues:
> >
> >"Of course, a child learns, let us say, how he
> >is supposed to behave with his mother, that it
> >is necessary to listen to her, and he listens,
> >but can it be said that in this way the child
> >plays the role of a son or a daughter? It is
> >just as absurd to speak, for example, about the
> >¡°role¡± of the polar explorer ¡°accepted¡± by
> >Nansen: For him it was not a role, but a mission."
> >
> > I must be missing something. This doesn't
> > seem absurd to me at all, particularly not the
> > bit about the role of son or daughter. What the devil is he getting at?
> >
> > "Sometimes a man actually plays one role or
> > another, but nevertheless it remains for him
> >only a role regardless of the extent to which it
> >is internalized. A role is not a personality but
> >rather a representation behind which it hides.
> >If we are to use the terminology of P. Janet,
> >the concept of a role corresponds not to the
> >concept of personality (personnalite)
> >but to the concept of personage (personnage)."
> >
> > I get it! The analogy is something like
> > "glove-hand", "mask-face",
> > "personnage-personality". But doesn't this kind
> > of analogy assume a "personnage" which is
> > merely a social tool (a glove or a mask) and a
> > "personality" (a hand or a face) which is in some sense not?
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Seoul National University of Education
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >---------------------------------
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Received on Wed Feb 13 09:28 PST 2008