[xmca] Agency/Structure, Individual/Society, Subject/Object

[Gregory Allan Thompson <gathomps@uchicago.edu>]

Tony, 
Seems good to have a reason to mark out stark positions. Good motivation to produce...

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that my position is stark enough with yours to provide much fuel to the fire - mostly just smoke and mirrors. 

Sure enough, I was playing somewhat fast and loose with metaphors ("the conveyor-belt of life" - certainly way too much!). And this line would suggest reading "production" in those terms.

But the sense (smysl) of production that I was after was not the estranged conveyor-belt production that results FROM alienated labor and results IN "the commodity". Rather, I had in mind the sense of production that comes from non-alienated labor (not very well expanded upon by Marx), labor that, as I read it, is infused with creativity and individuality (even if that individuality is made possible only through "the social").* This is the sense of "production" that I had in mind when I spoke of individuals being "produced" in and through contexts. I take this type of "being produced" to be key to what motivates us to act and do in our everyday lives.

I hope that doesn't take the wind out of your sails too much since it sounded like the other sense of "production" might have better inspired a thoughtful response about educational policy thinking in the US. 

Regardless, I would love to hear the response that you had planned -- when you have some time again...

All the best,
greg


*And recall that in Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic, the individual and creative properties of the Slave's labor is what provides the potential (albeit unrealized potential) for the slave to realize his own self-consciousness and transcend immediacy. Thus, production liberates us from the here and now of the sensuous world.

Message: 6
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 20:07:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tony Whitson <twhitson@UDel.Edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Agency/Structure, Individual/Society,
Subject/Object
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.60L.1009282000310.20430@copland.udel.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed

On Tue, 28 Sep 2010, Gregory Allan Thompson wrote:

> I prefer "transformed", but I think "produced" captures the sense
> very nicely as well.

I think of formative (incl. transformative) activity and productive
process as profoundly different affairs -- and I see the loss of awareness
of formation as activity involving way more than just production as a
seriously consequential failure of education discourse in the United
States.

Regretably, I won't be able to elaborate on this until after the
semester. For now, I can only mark a stark position here. 
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