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Re: [xmca] Re: Solidarity and the Vanishing 401K



Thank you Michael providing your paper electronically. I have not received MCA yet.

Can I just make a couple of point (again) on the origins of words in relation to the first page of your paper.

1. The derivation of "conscious" does have a meaning of shared knowledge, but the original meaning was more of being privy to exclusive knowledge, if I read the OED correctly:

f. L. consci-us knowing something with others, knowing in oneself, privy to, conscious + -OUS. L. consci-us f. con- together + sci- knowing, as in scire to know: cf. nescius unknowing, præscius foreknowing. There is no such word in F., which uses conscient in some of the senses (as did also Bacon); but It. has conscio privy, accessary, guilty, from 16th c.]

2. Many of us find the usage of "ontological" that you subscribe to a bit grating. this is because "Ontology" is and was for 1,000 years the study of Being, a branch of metaphysics. And then Existentialism came along in the 1930s, and for these people Being was a question of personal identity, thus Ontology = to with Personal Identity. This is very confusing if you're not an Existentialist, and believe something exists outside of individual consciousness.

3. "Solidarity" entered English directly from the French in 1848 at the Chartist Convention, not from Latin. It's meaning is not the conformist relation that applies between people in the same community, but contrariwise the relation one extends to an other in need help. I am absolutely certain that it had nothing to do with Logical Positivist definitions of solidness.

I have always had in interest in word origins, so I thought I'd throw these points in.

Andy


Wolff-Michael Roth wrote:
Hi all,
Mike suggested I give you the link to the solidarity paper. It is on my website, through a link on the right hand side, where you find the proofs of the piece. (http://www.educ.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/) MIchael
On 13-Apr-09, at 8:39 AM, Mike Cole wrote:

David--- It would help Michael and XMCA A LOT, if everyone would take
Michael's model of seeking to stimulate discussion and write editorials
of their own!!  That was the idea, but one hand cannot clap.

There are upcoming editorials by others, but too few others. For a group
that admires Bakhtin, this one appears oddly shy about giving voice in
printed form of MCA where such practices are SPECIFICALLY urged.

Perhaps Michael will choose to circulate the editorial so folks who are not
subscribers can judge for themselves. Or they will follow your
good advise and subscribe. That would be a great mode of self
aggrandizement, since the more people subscribe and contribute the
higher ranking in those eggrecious tenure ranking polls they would climb --
assuming, of course, that they also write regular article!!!!!!

off to the academic zoo.
mike

On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 2:48 AM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:


As Mike suggests there is some very good meat in the latest MCA which will well repay the price of an on-line, or even a paper, subscription. The piece
by Richardson Bruna, for example, is an almost perfect case of taking
apparently "incommensurable" approaches and synthesizing them in a practical
matter of everyday teaching; just the sort of thing that MCA is justly
famous for.

So, much as I appreciate the editorial genre that Wolff-Michael Roth has
established (long, many portioned reflections on matters of meta-science
generously illustrated with real data), I always find pronouncements like "a cultural historical analysis begins with ontological solidarity" (p,. 109) rather jarring, even intolerant. More than one contributor to this list and to this journal begins excellent cultural historical research from a very
different kind of solidarity.

At the bottom of the same page, I was highly amused to read this:

"The problem with labor solidarity and other solidarity movements for
special purposes comes from the fact that these forms of solidarity simply
pit the interests of one group (social class) against the interests of
another and often against the group (labor class) itself--for example, when
unionized individuals go on strike they may hurt the stock values of the
companies in which their retirement plans have invested. These forms of
solidarity serve to bond those within a certain boundary against those that are to be on its outside. This solidarity serves strategic purposes, which
undermines the very notion of solidarity."

I guess our poor editor must have written this before the bankers staged a credit lockout, the actual market for live-in housing was foreclosed upon, and the 401Ks were bled white as a balance sheet--all without any apparent
claw marks from the labor movement! Time is unforgiving stuff.

David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education






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Wolff-Michael Roth,
Lansdowne Professor, Applied Cognitive Science
MacLaurin Building A548
University of Victoria
Email: mroth@uvic.ca
Internet: http://www.educ.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth

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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
From Erythrós Press and Media <http://www.erythrospress.com/>.

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