Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts

[Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>]

That's an interesting piece, Mike. Writing a text book on 
communication, he wants to emphasize the distinction between 
a technical device, technique and technology, in terms of 
distinctions between things and the social practices and 
knowledge for using them. From there the author extends 
these distinctions to the human body. "Even as we insist on 
this qualitative change" of using things outside the body, 
he feels it important to group the human body as a 
"resource" (i.e., artefact) albeit an inherent one.

The context I came to the same view was (1) in trying to 
figure out where to fit the human body in a reading of Hegel 
(for whom the cultural origin of the human body is unknown), 
(2) understanding the blind person's stick scenario used in 
Activity Theory (where to draw a line between body and 
artefact), and (3) trying to understand what the problem 
with intersubjective theories in the Frankfurt School 
(readings of Mead or of Hegel).

In these latter cases, writers subsumed the human body into 
the "subject" (as does ANL actually), and thus, the 
culturally shaped and inherited nature of the human body, 
*used* in communication and labour, is elided into the the 
subject itself, as if not historical or culturally 
resourced, but autonomous.

How did you read this piece, Mike?

Andy

mike cole wrote:
> I was unsure how to contribute to the discussion of bodies and artifacts.
> Reading an
> article by Raymond Williams for class monday, I came across a passage that
> appears
> relevant. Its from his edited book on Communication on the topic of comm
> technologies
> and social institutions. I could only cut and past from the pdf I had, so it
> is attached. I
> think the distinction he makes between "inherent physical resources" and
> "systems based
> on the development and application of objects and forces outside the human
> body" may
> be relevant. Or maybe not. Hard to move things from one discussion to
> another and have the meaning remain roughly the same.
>
> But Williams is always interesting to think with. Even fragments.
> mike
> -
>
>
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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov, 
Ilyenkov $20 ea

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