Re: [xmca] Kaustuv Roy and the Social Mediation of Despair

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Kristofferson is quoting Janis Joplin, Robert..... not long before she
overdosed and exited.
Continuing to think about esthetics and ethics, David. And thinking about
the twists and turns of
dao mei.  Also thinking about that money floating around just over people's
heads. Reminds me
of Lancasterian educational settings where candies were dangled over
sprawling halls of kids. The candy was lowered when kids were well behaved,
raised when they were not. A universal nightmare for the arrangement of
massive dao mei?
mike

On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 5:57 AM, Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu>wrote:

> David,
> You never fail to set a furnished table with a feast of thought in your
> posts. Thanks for the richness for "thinking and speech!
>
> I would much rather have even seeming contradictions, multiple meanings and
> personal semantics  in freedom( i.e "freedom's just another word for
> nothing
> left to do"  Kristofferson <
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kris_Kristofferson>and
>  Foster <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Foster>) than in the (not that
> far fetched) Orwellian Newspeak  word for it where freedom can ONLY mean,
> "the dog is free of lice".
>
>
> Robert
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 6:00 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
> >wrote:
>
> > Well, of course, there are big differences between Jewish humor and
> > Chinese; we Jews don't usually have quite so many pigs running around in
> our
> > jokes. Yet it seems to me that the reversible figures of hope and grounds
> of
> > despair are quite similar.
> >
> > Spinoza says somewhere that the only way to overcome a negative emotion
> is
> > through a stronger, positive one. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to have
> > defined very clearly how to tell a negative emotion from a positive one.
> >
> > Worse, he doesn't really bother to tell us how to tell a stronger emotion
> > from a weaker one, except for the test of Buridan's ass: when you are
> stuck
> > between two emotions which impell you in opposite directions, the one
> which
> > makes you act is the stronger one.
> >
> > It seems to me that a lot of Vygotsky's writing on both ethics are
> > esthetics have, at bottom, an interesting paradox: an emotion which is
> > actually quite weak on an individual level (say, the desire to draw a
> > picture, something quite easily forgotten in everyday activity, or the
> > desire to quite smoking) becomes enormously powerful on a social level.
> >
> > But the opposite seems equally true; an emotion that is overwhelming on
> an
> > individual level simply disappears when it is framed as a social one. It
> > seems to me that it's for this reason that we no longer read the "novels
> of
> > conscience" that were such a big deal in the mid nineteenth century.
> >
> > (A brilliant Oxford graduate begins to doubt the truth of the thirty nine
> > articles of the Anglican church, he is forced to give up his living,
> > he becomes a non-conformist minister to the poor, he falls in love with a
> > working class girl, dies of consumption....see what I mean? It's hard to
> > even think of ONE! But "Nemesis of Faith", and "Robert Elsmere" were as
> > famous in their time as Antonio Salieri's music was in his....)
> >
> > Since the nineteenth century (at least), art has really been struggling
> > with the terrible idea that so bothered Sartre: that we humans are not
> works
> > of art, that we are ends and not means, that without God, man's existence
> > precedes any functional purpose the non-existent God might have had in
> mind,
> > and man is condemned ("dao mei") to be free, where "free" is one of those
> > words that means both itself and its opposite, both randomness and
> > pointlessness and deliberateness and pointed volition.
> >
> > (Chinese women have menstrual periods, they use "dao mei" as a euphemism;
> > it means pre-damnation in the old Protestant sense of predestination, and
> > therefore LACK of choice, LACK of free will, determinism in a very direct
> > and non-Spinozan sense, irrational biological determinism.)
> >
> > For Jews, and for Chinese people, the metaphysical double meaning of the
> > word "free" is hard to understand. There are too many other people around
> to
> > worry about stuff like that, and anyway, everybody knows that what "free"
> > really means: Lucky you, you don't pay this time.
> >
> > David Kill-hogg
> > Seoul National University of Education
> >
> >
> > --- On Sat, 1/22/11, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] Kaustuv Roy and the Social Mediation of Despair
> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > Date: Saturday, January 22, 2011, 8:55 AM
> >
> >
> > Thanks David & David-- For pointing out Roy's work and the additional
> > comments. It would be great if some of our Russian colleagues could chip
> in
> > with apposite examples of Russian "anekdoti" which provide interesting
> > variations on the themes you illustrated DKe.
> > mike
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 4:10 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
> > >wrote:
> >
> > > First of all, let me wholeheartedly endorse Kaustuv Roy's book, and
> also
> > > his paintings, and also his new project for a community art centre. Roy
> > is a
> > > pluralist in the very best sense; not the common po-mod variety who
> > builds
> > > pluralism on a general lack of seriousness, or the practical sort who
> is
> > a
> > > jack of all trades, but rather a deeply critical pluralist who sees all
> > > paradigms as partial and no paradigm as perfect, and derives from
> > precisely
> > > this source the need for social mediation with everything.
> > >
> > > Including emotion! If you look at his paintings you can see that almost
> > all
> > > of them have some kind of ideational foreground embedded in an
> affective
> > > background. I was pleasantly surprised at the optimism of the
> paintings,
> > > since as David Kirshner remarks his book is a deeply pessimistic one. I
> > am
> > > sure that Roy's new teaching assignment agrees with him, and as Jesus
> > Christ
> > > says somewhere, it is better to be loved than tenured.
> > >
> > > And, secondly, for something (not) completely different. I'm in China,
> in
> > > my wife's hometown of Xi'an, and it's the dead of winter. The streets
> are
> > > dusty, people are cold and hungry, it is almost time for Spring
> Festival,
> > > and fabulous amounts of money are sloshing around, directly over our
> > heads
> > > and just out of reach.
> > >
> > > Just as there is a distinctively Jewish kind of humor, there is a
> > > distinctively Chinese sort. In fact, I think the two are consanguinous,
> > > although probably not on speaking terms. Here's an example, which my
> > > sister-in-law told me the other day.
> > >
> > > "A farmer had two pigs. The little pig complained about the food and
> the
> > > accomodation, but the big pig told him that he was being ungrateful.
> "We
> > > have enough to eat and a warm place to sleep, we can shit anywhere we
> > like.
> > > All we have to do is to show our gratitude by eating and sleeping and
> > > shitting as gratefully as we can." So the little pig and slept and shat
> > as
> > > much as a pig could, and when it came time to choose a pig for Spring
> > > Festival slaughter, the little pig was not so little any more. As the
> > farmer
> > > took the pig for his table, the big pig told him that he was lucky; he,
> > > the big pig, had lived there for many years and he never got invited to
> > the
> > > Spring Festival feast even once...."
> > >
> > > As you can see, there are some common elements with Jewish humor: the
> > > expectation of disaster and the social mediation of despair. There are
> > also
> > > some different elements, though: the self-serving nature of gratitude
> > > and also of injunctions to be grateful, and above all the rather
> > un-Jewish
> > > critique of a concept I can only call "dao mei".
> > >
> > > "Dao mei" means that you are damned. Your evil fate is preordained, and
> > any
> > > attempt to resist it will simply make your ignominious failure and
> > immanent
> > > collapse longer, more complicated, and still more undignified. It's a
> > very
> > > Chinese idea, as well as a Jewish one of course. But in some ways the
> > > CRITIQUE of "dao mei" is even more Chinese.
> > >
> > > Here's another example:
> > >
> > > "A pig farmer tried to save money by raising his own corn. He bought
> some
> > > fertilizer to help it grow, but it was fake, so the crop died. In
> > despair,
> > > he bought insecticide to poison himself and his whole family at a
> > farewell
> > > banquet, but it was fake so everybody survived. His son was so
> overjoyed
> > at
> > > the failure of the suicide attempt that he bought Chinese liquor to
> > > celebrate. It was fake, so everybody died."
> > >
> > > On the face of it, this is a perfect example of "dao mei". But when you
> > > really look at it, you will see that it is just like the first joke:
> the
> > > choices you make do matter, but the problem is that you don't have
> quite
> > > enough information by yourself to make them properly. The social
> > mediation
> > > of despair is your only hope, but it is also an endless mine of new
> > despair.
> > >
> > > David Kellogg
> > > Seoul National University of Education
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
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>
>
> --
> *Robert Lake  Ed.D.
> *Assistant Professor
> Social Foundations of Education
> Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
> Georgia Southern University
> P. O. Box 8144
> Phone: (912) 478-5125
> Fax: (912) 478-5382
> Statesboro, GA  30460
>
>  *Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
> midwife.*
> *-*John Dewey.
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