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Re: [xmca] Re: fiction as simulation

This question of repetitional listening has me thinking about Vygotsky's theory of art as emotional catharsis.
I've been reading Psychology of Art. From the last Chapter, Art and Life:
"If we consider art to be catharsis, it is perfectly clear that it cannot arise where there is nothing but live and vivid feeling. A sincere feeling taken per se cannot create art. It lacks more than technique or mastery, because a feeling expressed by a technique will never generate a lyric poem or a musical composition. To do this we require the creative act of overcoming the feeling, resolving it, conquering it. Only when this act has been performed – then and only then is art born. This is why the perception of art requires creativity: it is not enough to experience sincerely the feeling, or feelings, of the author; it is not enough to understand the structure of the work of art; one must also creatively overcome one’s own feelings, and find one’s own catharsis; only then will the effect of art be complete." 

- Steve



On Dec 21, 2009, at 3:46 PM, mike cole wrote:


Buy all means, go back re-read your prior writings, Jay, for identity
examination!!  :-))
With grand kids and kids coming in this pm, I'll see what they have to say 
on the topic. Ageliki's ideas about the developmental change.
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 12:27 PM, Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:
I would agree with Ageliki's conjectures about some of the functions of repetition, esp. the sense of control/predictability for the very young, and 
identity reinforcement for those a bit older, even up to adults.
I did write something some years back about the issue of timescales in 
meaning-making, and I was looking for kinds of meaning-making social
practices that extend over VERY LONG timescales. One of those is the
re-reading of favorite works, and the re-viewing of films and TV episodes, 
over periods of years, even decades and a whole lifetime. Identity
maintenance through extended identifications and re-identifications with characters and fictional worlds is one part of this. Another of course is 
deepening and changing of meanings-made as we re-visit, now with the
experience of new intertexts, new age-grade concerns, etc. And as usual, the functions from earlier times of our lives continue, while others are added 
on.
Another dimension may be that of remembering our previous encounters with a work while we are re-visiting it. How I felt about it before, what it meant to me before, and how that is both renewed and now changed in the current 
encounter.

I should re-visit my own writing on this topic and see what I am not
remembering!
As to the wider social functions of narrative fictions, a very important one is building up convincing evaluations, and with them, principles for making evaluations. This is the "moral" dimension of literature that has 
pre-occupied literary critics for a very long time, but it is also an
important sociological and ideological dimension. Bakhtin's analysis here emphasizes that some literary narratives embody multiple and alternative systems of parsing and evaluating the social world (heteroglossia), and combined with later work on narrator viewpoints, there is a quite complex world of possible evaluations offered in some works. Compared to those, people also appreciate morally unambiguous fictional worlds, where we can feel some sense of relief from the moral dilemmas of real life. Not to mention the pleasures of seeing the "good guys" win, at least in fiction. 

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 21, 2009, at 9:38 AM, Ageliki Nicolopoulou wrote:
The one person that I know who has written about repetitions of listening, 
but also telling, the "same" story is Peggy Miller and her students
"Versions of storytelling/versions of experience: Genre for tools for creating alternative realities" in an edited volume by Rosengren, Johnson, & Harris (2000) "Imagining the impossible." Their emphasis in this piece is the type of increasing (and deepening) understanding that this child who for sometime was repeating the story of Peter Rabbit was gaining and especially 
his increasing identification with Peter Rabbit.
While I don't dispute the phenomenon that Peggy Miller et al. capture here, I also think that storytelling (or story listening) repetitions may have multiple functions/meanings. For example, in children's spontaneous 
stories that I have gathered in preschool classrooms using Paley's
storytelling/story-acting activity, children's repetitions of the same storyline (something that some children love to do!) at times seems to have to do with what I call, narrative concerns (getting the story right: that is, a coherent or logical story as the child perceives it), but other repetitions may indicate more clearly socio-relational concerns (getting the 
same effect from other children and maybe adults) and so on.
I also think that repetitions of the sort Mike is talking about-- children asking for the same story to be read over and over again as well as teens or adults reading the same book over and over again--may serve different functions. I believe the young children love such repetitions because it mainly allows them to control the world around them. They can predict what comes next and for a limited amount of time, they have full control of their (often chaotic and unpredictable) world. That's why they are very upset if one changes even one word in these repetitions. However, adolescents (and maybe adults) may like such repetitions because of the experiences and feelings that the fictional world creates (and they can bask in it) and also through repetitions they learn to discover new things...Maybe adolescents love such repetitions because it helps them see the identity they want/like 
to create.  At least these are my conjectures about these phenomena.
In short, I think these are very interesting phenomena that have occupied my attention for awhile now, but they need to be captured well and in a natural sort of way... Any thoughts of how to capture these phenomena would 
be appreciated.

Ageliki
--
**********************************************
Ageliki Nicolopoulou
Professor, Department of Psychology
Lehigh University
17 Memorial Drive East
Bethlehem, PA  18015-3068
Personal Webpage: http://www.lehigh.edu/~agn3/index.htm<http://www.lehigh.edu/%7Eagn3/index.htm > Departmental Webpage: http://www.lehigh.edu/~inpsy/nicolopoulou.html <http://www.lehigh.edu/%7Einpsy/nicolopoulou.html> 

*********************************************


mike cole wrote:


Yes it applies to little kids!
I LOVE the Stevenson quote in response to H. James (who seems to have 
gotten wrapped up in an odd place in the quote).
Sheila and i were discussing last night the phenomenon of little kids like to hear the same story read over and over and over and over again and 
young teens reading, for example, Lord of the Rings several times.
And adults going to Operas or listening to music they particularly love 
repeatedly.
There is an age-related component to these phenomena -- parents go nuts 
on the 300th reading of /Where the Wild Things Are/ or
/Goodnight Moon/, little kids cannot stand, as a rule, listening to the 
Goldberg variations, etc.

Has anyone written about this phenomeon and what means?
Thanks for the /Educated Mind/ tip, David C. Sound relevant to ongoing 
discussion re goals of education that might guide reform
efforts.

mike

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Ageliki Nicolopoulou <agn3@lehigh.edu
<mailto:agn3@lehigh.edu>> wrote:

 Thanks, Mike, for this very useful article. This relates a lot to
 what I have been trying to do these past few years and it pulls
 the adult literature well together.  My work has centered more on
 preschoolers spontaneous (fantasy) stories and I have tried to
 find ways to analyze them, which goes beyond just using structural
 criteria but also incorporates content in a serious way (that is,
 it incorporates content and structure).  I have also argued (as do
 Mar & Oatley, but for adults) for the significant of character in
 children's narratives (whether for learning to comprehend or tell
 stories) and I'm continuing to think about these issues. More
 recently, I have devoted my attention/effort in creating an
 intervention programs using commercially available children's
 books to promote narrative comprehension as well as social
 understanding, especially for low-income children.  As I'm in the
 midst of writing about these issues, this article is very useful.

 Thanks again,
 Ageliki

 --     **********************************************
 Ageliki Nicolopoulou
 Professor, Department of Psychology
 Lehigh University
 17 Memorial Drive East
 Bethlehem, PA  18015-3068
Personal Webpage: http://www.lehigh.edu/~agn3/index.htm<http://www.lehigh.edu/%7Eagn3/index.htm > 
 <http://www.lehigh.edu/%7Eagn3/index.htm>
 Departmental Webpage:
http://www.lehigh.edu/~inpsy/nicolopoulou.html<http://www.lehigh.edu/%7Einpsy/nicolopoulou.html > 
 <http://www.lehigh.edu/%7Einpsy/nicolopoulou.html>
 **********************************************


 mike cole wrote:

     Of course, i *would *forget to attach the article. Here it is.
     mike

     On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 4:56 PM, mike cole<lchcmike@gmail.com
     <mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>>  wrote:


         Sorting through all the unread journals and seeking to
         bring order to the
         helterskelter
         of my intellectual meanderings, i came across this article
         that I think
         should hold some
         interest for xmca-o-philes.

         As some of you know, I have an abiding interest in the
         idea of tertiary
         artifacts, works of
         art, for Wartofsky (so I learned from Yrjo), play,
         "alternative worlds"
         like the 5th Dimension
         that Peg Griffin invented and I have played in for a long
         time. But I also
         teach and think (think and
         teach?) about various communication media including novels
         and sitcoms.
         This article caught
         my attention in that odd nexus of interests: fiction as
         "simulations," or,
         we might say, tertiary artifacts, or we might say, "tools
         to think with."

         Delete or read along, as the mood catches you.
         mike


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--

**********************************************

Ageliki Nicolopoulou

Professor

Department of Psychology, Lehigh University

17 Memorial Drive East

Bethlehem, PA  18015-3068
Personal Webpage: http://www.lehigh.edu/~agn3/index.htm<http://www.lehigh.edu/%7Eagn3/index.htm >
Departmental Webpage: http://www.lehigh.edu/~inpsy/nicolopoulou.html <http://www.lehigh.edu/%7Einpsy/nicolopoulou.html> 

**********************************************


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