Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts

[Larry Purss <lpurss@shaw.ca>]

Mike
Your comment that this leaves us only at the starting gate of understanding how bodies can be "written on"  points to the research and reflection on the relation of changes in the brain mediated by culture.  
One area of research that is exploring how the brain is changed via mediation is intersubjective infant developmental studies that are mapping physiological changes in one person's brain that "mirrors" similar  physiological brain changes  being generated during the activity of the other  person.  Fonagy is doing research in this area and has written a detailed summary of the research in this area. His term for this intersubjective process is "mentalization". 

Larry

----- Original Message -----
From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
Date: Saturday, December 12, 2009 12:19 pm
Subject: Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>

> I do not have all this sorted out by a long shot, but my own way 
> of thinking
> about the issue is that humans are hybrids, really complex 
> one's. Their
> brains have LITERALLY been shaped by prior genrations of 
> mediation of
> activity through material artifacts, their brains (and often 
> other parts of
> the bodies) cannot operate normally without inclusion of 
> artifacts, they can
> be "written on" as jay points out.
> 
> The problem is that this leaves us only at the starting gate for 
> furtherdevelopment of this point of view. I found that 
> experimental study I sent
> around sort of interest in this regard, even though it provides 
> such sketchy
> detail and assumes so much about its cultural content and 
> organization. The
> developmental implications, which in our current discussion 
> would mean, the
> organization of hybridity during ontogeny, which in turn has 
> implicationsfor the cognition/emotion
> discussion.
> mike
> 
> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 5:36 PM, Jay Lemke 
> <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:
> 
> >
> > One of the ways I have found useful to think about the body in 
> relation to
> > semiotic mediation is to see the body as, among other things, 
> a semiotic
> > artifact.
> >
> > What I mean by semiotic artifact is a material object or 
> substrate that can
> > be written on and read from, much like a printed page or an 
> architectural> drawing. Written on, in the general semiotic 
> sense, not necessarily in
> > words, but in signs of some kind: meaningful features that can 
> be "read" or
> > made sense of by people (or nonhumans, but that's another 
> story) in that our
> > meaning-mediated world, and our actions that respond to that world
> > (including by trying to change or re-create it or just imagine 
> it in some
> > new way), are affected by our encounter with the features of 
> the semiotic
> > object, according to some community interpretive practices, 
> with our own
> > individual variations on them.
> >
> > At a very obvious level, bodies can be dressed up in signs: 
> hair styles,
> > tans, cosmetics. And this can be taken to a more "artifactual" 
> form with
> > dress, or a more physiological form with, say, body-building. 
> From tattoos
> > to ripped abs is a small shift when we are thinking about the 
> body as a
> > writable/readable object. If we want to get still more 
> physiological, and
> > think not only about reading other people's bodies, but 
> reading our own,
> > then the proprioceptive feelings we sense within out bodies 
> can be
> > considered signs as well, whether exhilaration or nausea, 
> strength or
> > weakness, etc. The meaning of these feelings is certainly culturally
> > mediated. They are physiological phenomena, but they are also 
> meaningful> cultural phenomena, with value judgements attached, 
> with intertexts in
> > literature, etc.
> >
> > And we can deliberately write to our most physiological 
> states, e.g. with
> > drugs, to produce feelings that have cultural meanings and 
> values for us,
> > whether of calm or elation, energy or hallucination. And to a 
> considerable> extent, our modifications of our body physiology 
> can be "read" by others,
> > just as can our made physiques, tattoos, or hair styles.
> >
> > So I would say that the body mediates our sense of the world 
> and ourselves
> > and other people in at least two ways: directly through 
> physiology, as with
> > hormonal responses, sensory modalities of perception, bodily 
> affordances and
> > dis-affordances ("handicaps" for example), etc. AND also in 
> these other,
> > clearly semiotic and cultural ways, as a semiotic artifact, as 
> well as with
> > the cultural overlays of meaning that lie over and color the 
> meanings and
> > responses to all the direct physiological mediations.
> >
> > I do not, however, know what being wooden on a rainy day feels 
> like to a
> > chair.
> >
> >
> > JAY.
> >
> >
> > Jay Lemke
> > Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
> > Educational Studies
> > University of Michigan
> > Ann Arbor, MI 48109
> > www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
> >
> > Visiting Scholar
> > Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
> > University of California -- San Diego
> > La Jolla, CA
> > USA 92093
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Dec 7, 2009, at 4:14 AM, Mabel Encinas wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Ok. You have a point. Then, lets start thinking from an 
> embodied approach
> >> :)
> >>
> >> Let's accept that the body is an artifact. What is then the 
> difference>> between a chair and the body. Both are yes, 
> "products of human art", as you
> >> express it. However, only in the process (practice) there 
> seem to be a
> >> difference. Both are material and ideal (the body is not 
> separated from the
> >> mind; the chair, this one here that I feel is made of cloth 
> and a cushioned
> >> material, plastic, metal, and involves the ideal that a 
> designer and workers
> >> in a factory transformed so people could seat on). What is 
> the difference?
> >>
> >> Mabel
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>  Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 22:53:40 +1100
> >>> From: ablunden@mira.net
> >>> To: liliamabel@hotmail.com
> >>> Subject: Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts
> >>>
> >>> Well, the body is the body is the body. The reason the
> >>> question arises for me is when we make generalisations in
> >>> which things like person, artefact, consciousness, concept,
> >>> action, and so on, figure, where does the body fit in? My
> >>> response was that even though it is obviously unique in many
> >>> ways, it falls into the same category as artefacts.
> >>>
> >>> My questions to you are: what harm is done? why is anything
> >>> ignored? And, what is the body if it is not a material
> >>> product of human art, used by human beings?
> >>>
> >>> Andy
> >>>
> >>> Mabel Encinas wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Is this way being fruitful? That is why I do not like to 
> consider the
> >>>> body as an artifact. Did not cognitive pscyhology do that? 
> (Bruner, Acts
> >>>> of Meaning). Then intentions and all the teleological 
> aspects are so
> >>>> much ignored...
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Mabel
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>  Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 20:21:09 +1100
> >>>>> From: ablunden@mira.net
> >>>>> To: liliamabel@hotmail.com
> >>>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Sure. But the body has been constructed like a living
> >>>>> machine - the various artefacts that you use (especially but
> >>>>> not only language and images) are "internalized" in some
> >>>>> way. So one (external) artefact is replaced by another
> >>>>> (internal) artefact. Yes?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Andy
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Mabel Encinas wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> However, sometimes practices do not involve other artefact
> >>>>>> than the body (some practices are directed to the body), 
> and that was
> >>>>>> why I was talking about the limit of thinking about the 
> body as
> >>>>>> artefact... is that a limit? That is why I mentioned the 
> body as "the
> >>>>>> raw material". I was thinking for example practices 
> linked to
> >>>>>>
> >>>>> meditation
> >>>>
> >>>>> and the like, for example, among many others.
> >>>>>> Mabel
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------
> >>>> Keep your friends updated— even when you’re not signed in.
> >>>> <
> >>>> http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/windows/windowslive/see-
> it-in-action/social-network-
> basics.aspx?ocid=PID23461::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-xm:SI_SB_5:092010
> >>>> >
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> -------------------------------------------------------------
> -----------
> >>> Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
> >>> Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov,
> >>> Ilyenkov $20 ea
> >>>
> >>>
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