Re: [xmca] The God Terminus and other forbidden topics

[christine schweighart <schweighartgate@hotmail.com>]

Hi Arturo,
We have only had one talk and meeting at Bath - I remember now we broke off on the nature of Law - and I didn't get to explore in that one conversation how Law as practice is 'positive Law'  (dynamic and changing). I since have been 'visitor' and in a particular community of Law educators - which has since been disbanded here in the UK. In Environmental Law (which is implicated around issue such as ‘the asbestos case’), the ‘positive’ becomes active in delegated agencies – i.e issues are dealt with there and only ‘precedents’ ever reach a court. About three quarters of influence here is generated from EU ‘positive’ influencing, amendments refinements – Although some of these sources have environmental ‘rights’ in constitutional form – this is ‘obviated’ in different ways. Environmental issues are multi-disciplinary – and so there is a new question of 
 “What  core thinking skills and educational intervention would be of developmental value?”  that I was exploring .  So I declare a possible perspective, of sorts. Yet student s develop as persons in an educational  ‘world’ in itself , how this experience becomes meaningful is not directly oriented to  functionality.  Even educators around in the sixties were expressing their disillusion that ‘marxist’ teaching ‘ just helped them screw their clients better’. Yet in present terms a general feeling was ‘to see past capitalist relations’ – as ‘subject requirement’ around the ‘environmental precautionary principle’.
 
 That was my ‘catch up’  after such a long time… it was my way of indicating focus upon a problem as generating my enquiry – rather than ‘dissection of historical ideas’ .
Your first paragraph takes me back to when I was asking myself what I was seeking in ‘researching’, and to exploration of Gramsci’s work to take on boards that a development could ‘contribute’ -  however you introduce two categories here ‘mass movement ‘ and ‘social movement’  and I  am looking for a relation – (rather than begin with paradigmatic categories that are static) in concept. So I’ll leave that. I can’t see ‘appropriation’ without knowing from which contradiction – I guess?? 
 But I  hear the social multiplicity and ‘legal regulation’ ‘call’ in this paragraph – ‘positive law’ lags behind and incorporates ( also not in any unity but in a contested multiplicity, in environmental  issues following the ‘protection agency’ intervention) ‘selectively’. 
 I find the locus of development in very ‘particular’  situations and can’t figure either Durkheim  or Bernstein as a tool  in enquiry .
  Andalucia has a history of ‘ light conquest’ of Catholicism over Al-Andalus – yet the catholic Spain’s  encountered in SAmerica  was  no longer in that dynamic.  I have spoken with a Bolivian visitor about Bolivia and, 32 languages and how these relate in a current context – but of Chile I have musician friends in the past in Manchester University–  my knowledge is limited – there is the intrinsic protest that produced riots.. Yet I have been talking with Patagonian scholars who have an education which is ‘free’ yet consumed by only advantaged.  My insight to education in Bolivia is that environmental problems require diversity of knowledge and learning from skill bases – rather than ‘power equilibrium’ driving the thinking. There is a crisis.
 
You say/quote’
In other words, using Wertsch's term, social
regulation is built on 'implicit mediation'. So the common denominator
is being united in the feeling and start building a conceptual system
anew bottom-up, which is something like the coding of common
experiences and trajectories.’
 
In my readings of Wertch I felt he never really got close to what he talked about as ‘consumption’ – so I am wary to take this pointer , whilst the principle ‘sounds’ right – what meaning is carried – how was the principle generated – I’ve never found that in Wertch’s writing. So it doesn’t add/help me  to move forward  ‘ i.e inspire motive beyond what I already ‘know’ – perhaps actually negates and diverts me someplace else. So I can’t comment, except that beginning building is not in united feeling ‘alone’ as such it’s around living contradictions. But in this  I don’t figure 
‘something like the coding of common experiences and trajectories’. ‘ Coding’?? !   And in what way is this emerging – for whom etc – is it helping in situ – is there mutual appropriation ?? or does what is coded then become a ‘loose canon’ J) which actually  becomes a tool of all being interpellated ‘as is ‘ once more.. what happened to working with conceptual relations – the ‘categories’ are temporally produced but the contradiction is not ‘removed’ , static and amenable to ‘code’ .
 Ayy que pena - que no hemos hablado mas … my teaching has been oriented to interdisciplinary ‘dialogue’ – but also conceptual ‘formation within’ .
Christine.
 
Ahh, we can’t talk more J I must get ready – going down to Stansted soon.
 
 Oh - the video - yes 'christine text' appended to the URL -no idea how the technology did that . However as you can see the security guard must have been embarrassed and as this went viral locally he perhaps the employer protected him because in the clip I sent - all faces are on view, in the second one the company people have been pixelled out - yet some members of the public haven't - You see as a 'flash mob' some dancers are 'social movement' yet others have joined in because they use their idiom of flamenco to then participate in the new formation - you can see dancers looking for the 'flow'
Yet I guess they didn't ask their permission either. Curious though is the gesture that the one that the company 'wanted pixelated'  ( for local identity etc)is the one that has been left visible 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv5dh8v7mDs


With pixels and english sub-titles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72jYiDLKa1k&feature=related

 
 


Hi Christine.
 
I agree that social movements do have a trajectory (or at least a
memory) of dialectics. But that is not enough to add the support of
the mass. And we have to distinguish the mass movement from the social
movement. If the rationality of the social movements is so clear, they
could attract followers just by presenting that rationality to 'the
public' at large. The problem, again, is that the best rationality
does not necessary equates with acceptance or appropriation (or how an
intervention can go sour or not happen at all). In a nutshell, the
"ideal", the "objective spirit", comprises many parts which are
absolutely different. The way people appropriate social mores is
different to the way legislation is done within a particular political
system. I think a way to deal with those differences is by using
Durkheim's and Bernstein's theoretical bodies. Put in another way, the
question is how to deal with different vectors of development or
rationalities.
 
The Chilean education reform movement is a clear case drawing on the
country's dialectic tradition. Yet, they have to draw the mass into it
while they keep working into enriching the "poder popular" (people's
power). In any case, there is no articulated top-down rationality
because power needs to be built up from bottom-up and that, I am
afraid, is against the logic of the theoretical system, which is
necessarily based on top-down relations. To work effectively on the
ZPD there must be a gradual transference of control, which is built
upon power differentials mediated by 'soft power', that is, by
everyday concepts and subtle calls to 'be good', 'disciplined',
'exemplary' and so on. In other words, using Wertsch's term, social
regulation is built on 'implicit mediation'. So the common denominator
is being united in the feeling and start building a conceptual system
anew bottom-up, which is something like the coding of common
experiences and trajectories.
 
This does not mean that emotions do not have a rationality. I believe
I do not need to make a case against the dychotomy emotion-rational
here.
 
What I am arguing is that the collective, the mechanic solidarity of
Durkheim, is based on gut feelings (the sense of belonging), and there
is an implicit horizontality there (in the feeling; the actual
appropriation is hierarchically organised), whereas the organic
solidarity of competing systems of knowledge, of ridiculous divisions
of labour right now, is not.
 
Furthermore, I believe that at least in Chile people are suspicious of
top-down technical interventions, for those have been implemented
without articulating real representational democracy. The social
movement may have answers to the educational woes but are afraid of
appearing as one more technocratic operator.
 
Academy may be dialogic within the division of subjects, schools,
etc., but true interdisciplinary is difficult to achieve. Overall, I
think that scholars tend to spend too much time and effort building
their careers (and knowledge), acquiring power, just to put themselves
in a horizontal relation. But there are many exceptions in this very
mailing list.
 
Best
 
Arturo
P.S. I could not open the link you sent on the Spanish indignados.
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