Re: [xmca] Article for Discussion

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Hi Mike

Why did I enjoy this article?  In my learning curve asking how we "go on"
with each other I'm curious about "figured worlds" "lenses" "containers" as
frameworks for how to proceed with each other.  In the past year the term
"perspectives" has moved to center stage in my curiosity about how we
interact with each other.  When I mentioned enjoying the article it was from
the perspective of learning more about the "discursive framework".  I was
going to use the term "discursive point of view" but the term "view"
privileges "seeing" as the metaphor for "knowing" and the term
"perspectives" is a much more inclusive term that includes cognition,
perception, identity, situated agency, figured worlds, frameworks.  Mead's
"me" as "being IN the perspectives of others" seems to be a general way of
capturing this more inclusive concept of "perspectives"  It seems to have
some affinity to Andy's elaboration of "gestalts"  At a speculative level I
wonder about the relation of perspectives and activity. In order to "go on"
within social acts [actions & activity] are we always operating FROM a
perspective?

David Ke, I believe correctly, suggests that perspectives are linked to
metaphors and that certain metaphors are more useful for "going on".  I
enjoyed the article as an elaboration of a PARTICULAR metaphor of learning
and that is the reason I suggested that Andre's article was interesting as a
bracketed perspective.  I read this article in the spirit of David Ki's
account of "genres" of learning as a particular discursive genre.

Metaphors as basic and embodied [Lakoff] was also a position from which I
read this article.  Lakoff suggests that a basic metaphor is "container" as
fundamental for "going on"  Andre's article is pointing to a RETROSPECTIVE
narrative of how 3 different students were gradually contained within a
community of practice.  The article suggests identity or dispositions are
inevitably an aspect of this BECOMING contained.  Salvadore Minuchin used
the metaphor of the turtle building a "shell" to help a recent widow create
a new container by going for lunch each day to the same restaurant, buying
her meat from the same grocer and following  these same routines and rituals
until she "grew a new shell".  Andre's article, as a bracketed genre of
positioning [as reflective] does not address narrative "practice" as
exploring anticipatory possible PROSPECTIVE interactivity emerging in moment
by moment engagements.  It also is privileging narrative accounts and leaves
out embodied mimesis as an aspect of interactivity.[see John Shotter for his
exploration of mimesis from a Wittgenstein perspective of the
emotional-volitional tone in our actions] However, my curiosity and
understanding of the discursive framework was elaborated by reading this
article.

Larry

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 8:15 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:

> I fear I had a lot of trouble reading and interpreting Andre Vagan's
> article. When I got to the end I went back and read the summary and intro
> again, then came back to the examples.
>
> My difficulty is that when I was done, and even as I write now, I cannot
> remember the cases in the case study. Without the proposed melding of the
> different theoretical perspectives, in fact,  would we have been unable to
> say anything useful about examples?
>
> Clearly the paper did a lot to please you, Larry. Is it possible to help
> out
> here for those of us less in the flow of these ideas?
>
> Mike
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