Re: [xmca] understanding understanding

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

I gotta go back and read Dewey to appreciate the full point here, Jay. Or
at least wikipedia summary of "art and experience." :-)
mike

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 6:22 PM, Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:

>
> I think it's come up here before, but I'd remind us about Dewey's Art and
> Experience, which was definitely making a move to try to redefine esthetic
> experience in a less elitist way, to ground it in a universal aspect of
> human experience, to merge the high-art experience and the craft-practice
> experience, and generally I'd say to "democratize" esthetics.
>
> In response to some of what Greg wrote here recently, it also struck me
> that perhaps there is something rather bourgeois about all this personal
> identity and "I'm the kind of person who does, feels X" reflexivity.
> Perhaps even a late modern cast to it. It seems to turn connoisseurship
> into something a bit more decadent, self-centered, pre-occupied with the
> ego, as opposed to the "ecstatic" tradition (as in ritual and festival,
> Bakhtin's carnivalesque, Victor Turner's liminality/communitas,
> Czikszentmihaly's flow), where the esthetic experience takes us "out of our
> Selves", into the music, the work, the unreflective experience. I think
> that tradition, however, is predicated more on active esthetic production
> as the norm, rather than the more consumerist approach we have devolved
> into under late capitalism.
>
> All this is probably further complicated by the different timescales of
> esthetic experience. When you perform a piece of music, or a dance, the
> timescale of action leaves no room for reflection. But when you compose a
> piece of music, or choreograph a dance, it does. It is certainly a cliche
> of modernism that the artist, in the downtime between bouts of production
> or inspiration, turns inwards and broods about the Self. Artist as
> narcissist. And now we have the art-consumer as narcissist. My idea of the
> esthetic experience is that it blows us past the ego, blows "us" away, and
> catalyzes a mode of Being prior to the ego-object divide.
>
> No?
>
> JAY.
>
>
> Jay Lemke
> Senior Research Scientist
> Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
> Adjunct Full Professor, Department of Communication
> University of California - San Diego
> 9500 Gilman Drive
> La Jolla, California 92093-0506
>
> New Website: www.jaylemke.com
>
> Professor (Adjunct status 2011-2012)
> School of Education
> University of Michigan
> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
>
> Professor Emeritus
> City University of New York
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mar 31, 2012, at 8:42 PM, Martin Packer wrote:
>
> > Greg,
> >
> > I think it is Larry you should be thanking for posting the article on
> Gadamer. But since you link back to questions I was asking about
> self-as-subject and self-as-object, I'll send a quick response to your
> message.
> >
> > As I recall, Bourdieu in Distinction was taking a shot at a bourgeois
> aesthetics of detached, disinterested appreciation - which he diagnosed in
> Kant's treatment of beauty, for example. So an ethics of immersion and
> participation strikes me as a move forward, though I grant you there's
> still a pretty big difference between being engrossed  in a painting in a
> gallery and being engrossed in a sing-song while quaffing ale and munching
> mutton.
> >
> > In both cases, though, there's a kind of appreciation in which rather
> than there being a clear and distinct object of perception there is instead
> a sense of moving through the object - if that is still the right word - of
> a flow and movement as though through a landscape, across a terrain.
> Various literary critics have said the same about the reading of a book.
> >
> > As you say, in general the self does not stand out in such an
> experience. Would you say that self-as-object starts to appear largely in
> occasions like that of your imaginary military man at the rally of the
> Mothers? That seems to be in line with Vygotsky's account of self-awareness
> manifesting as oppositionality in early childhood. But that's not so much
> recognition as struggle. Which reading of Hegel would you wish to make?
> >
> > Martin
> >
> >
> > On Mar 31, 2012, at 1:21 AM, Greg Thompson wrote:
> >
> >> Martin,
> >> Thanks for pointing out this very nice (and relatively short!) piece.
> >>
> >> I wholly agree with Gadamer's position (as described by Grondin) and
> find
> >> it a very appealing approach with one major caveat. First the appealing
> >> parts, and second the caveat.
> >>
> >> Gadamer's notion of the ability of art to "pull in" its audience
> >> articulates very nicely with a Latourian notion of actants (see bottom
> of
> >> p. 44 for lovely language about being "engrossed" and "pulled in" -
> "where
> >> our whole being is at stake").
> >>
> >> And yes indeed, as Gadamer notes, the true experience of the play is
> "being
> >> drawn into" the opposite of which is "not taking part" (cf. Durkheim's
> >> "anomie", but also consider Dewey's notions of the ideal balance between
> >> "goofing off" and "drudgery" that is further developed by Rathunde and
> >> Cziksentmihalyi in the notion of "serious play").
> >>
> >> Also, a lovely idea about the "temporality" of the experience of art:
> "The
> >> play of art will never be conceptually grasped; we may only participate
> in
> >> it to the extent that we allow ourselves to be moved by its magic."
> >>
> >> Gadamer nicely points to the way in which a persons self is taken up
> into
> >> the act of experiencing the art. This is an important move. As is the
> move
> >> away from epistemology and the desire for control via knowing - without
> >> much appreciation of the activity of knowing.
> >>
> >> Generally, I am in complete agreement with Gadamer's take, and I'm
> >> particularly fond of the blending together of play in art, festival, and
> >> ritual. I would add that I think Goffman's notion of interaction ritual
> >> (drawing on Durkheim's social ontology of subjectivity) accomplishes
> >> perhaps all of the work that Gadamer (via Grondin) is doing in this
> piece.
> >>
> >> But I can't help but be concerned about this deeply bourgeois notion of
> >> "the aesthetic" (rightly picked apart by Bourdieu and others). I'd
> rather
> >> bring it back down to earth, and return to what we might call the art of
> >> everyday life, a somewhat "crasser" notion of what is at work in play
> (and
> >> art). (I think that Grondin addresses this concern, to some degree,
> toward
> >> the end of his essay, but "art" seems to remain as something that
> everyone
> >> "gets" in one way or another).
> >>
> >> Social psychologist Jon Haidt has done some interesting work on what
> >> happens in the brain when one's hero (e.g., political hero, whether
> Barack
> >> Obama or George W. Bush) has been accused of doing something wrong, and
> >> then one finds one's hero vindicated. What he finds is that the
> "pleasure"
> >> areas of the brain "light up" (i.e. are active) when the vindication
> >> occurs. This is surely a banal insight - I discovered long ago the
> notion
> >> of a "feel good" thought - you know the thought that you are thinking
> and
> >> then manage to forget the content but remember the "feel" of it? And
> poets
> >> have been speaking of this for hundreds if not thousands of years.
> >>
> >> And this is a point that Levi-Strauss made long ago in his suggestion
> that
> >> we seek out structure, we desire it aesthetically. We seek patterns in
> the
> >> world and when we find them, we feel good. An aesthetic impulse. This
> is,
> >> perhaps, most effectively argued in The Sorcerer and His Magic where he
> >> presents three cases in which the truth of the events becomes secondary
> to
> >> the meaningful structures by which they are interpreted. Better to
> justify
> >> the system of meaning and deny what "really" happened rather than accept
> >> what "really" happened and deny the reality of the structures of meaning
> >> that provide one with a life-world. This simple contradiction between
> >> structure and event is at the core of what L-S was up to in his very
> long
> >> life. The contradiction happens whenever, as it inevitably will, the
> events
> >> of the world exceed the explanatory power of the structures of meaning
> by
> >> which we understand those events.
> >>
> >> What I think L-S was missing was a notion of recognition. That is to
> say,
> >> that it is not aesthetic impulse alone but rather that it is an impulse
> to
> >> be consummated in a way that 1) asserts the agency of the self (and a
> >> particular kind, an agency in social worlds) and 2) asserts the value of
> >> the self. So when "the facts" cause us to challenge the system of
> meaning
> >> that gives our self meaning and through which we attain powerful forms
> of
> >> social agency, it is better to deny the facts rather than become
> >> meaningless, or worse without a system withing which to know how to
> act. In
> >> either case, un-ruled, anomic. When we hear the exculpatory evidence of
> >> Barack O'Bama or George Bush, it is not just that a view of the world
> has
> >> been confirmed. Rather, it is that *we* ourselves (as "Democrats" or
> >> "Republicans") have been confirmed! The aesthetic impulse by itself
> would
> >> do little if it weren't for a self that breathes life into it and which
> it
> >> breathes life into.
> >>
> >> This is where I think Gadamer falls short as well. Gadamer is right to
> >> point out that there is an experience of the event that is prior to
> >> objectifications of the event and of the self (a kind of "absorption"
> >> (samadhi?) into the interaction/activity/play/festival/ritual). This
> >> phenomenological moment of pre-objectified (apparent) immediacy is right
> >> on. It is true that one can be pulled into such moments and this
> "pulling
> >> in" is a critical feature of human life (Goffman speaks of
> "engrossables"
> >> and of "involvement" in interaction). But there is also an object that
> >> matters in the event. We could speak of numerous play/festival/ritual
> >> events that wouldn't have these engrossing effects on participants
> >> precisely because of the nature of the object qua "self" that is
> entering
> >> into the event (aka the "subject").
> >>
> >> I once saw a lovely talk by an anthropologist who was speaking of the
> >> collective effervescence in a rally for the Mothers of the Plaza de
> Mayo in
> >> Argentina and is in protest of the military men who are considered to be
> >> responsible for the disappearance of their children. Every year there
> is a
> >> major gathering that takes on a festival like quality. At the lead-up to
> >> the main event, the whole crowd jumps up and down shouting (in Spanish)
> "if
> >> you're not jumping, you're a military man [i.e. the bad guys]." The
> >> anthropologist and the audience of anthropologists (at the University of
> >> Chicago) all insisted that this collective effervescence was all
> >> encompassing and that everyone present was pulled into the moment of
> >> jumping up and down (and the anthropologist presenting had some
> wonderful
> >> video of the event in which it did indeed seem that everyone was
> jumping up
> >> and down). But I couldn't help but ask "what if you are a military man?
> >> Would you be jumping just the same? or would you be cursing these
> "heathen"
> >> who are (perhaps to your mind) acting like animals?"
> >>
> >> Sure, the self-as-object may not be objectified in this moment, for
> there
> >> is an immediacy to the experience - we (apparently) perceive the world
> "as
> >> it is," not "as it is *to us*." So, in responding to Gadamer, there is
> no
> >> need to go back to an overly objectified notion of the self as subject.
> But
> >> at the same time, that the self-as-subject is consequential in the
> ordering
> >> of experience, and in making the experience of absorption "immediately"
> >> available in the first place, this is something that should not be left
> out
> >> lest we imagine that the bourgeois experience of walking into an art
> >> gallery and being "taken in" by the art is an experience that is somehow
> >> universal.
> >>
> >> All I'm saying here is that it would seem to me that the
> subject-as-object
> >> matters, more than a little, in the moment of absorption.
> >>
> >> Maybe Gadamer has built this somewhere into his structures of meaning
> and
> >> perhaps I missed it (maybe it was even in the aforementioned text).
> Happy
> >> to have someone set the record straight.
> >>
> >> Best,
> >> -greg
> >>
> >> On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 10:43 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Martin,
> >>> thanks for this link to the International Journal for Dialogical
> Sciences.
> >>> In the same spirit of exploring the notion of *understanding
> understanding*
> >>> I'm sending a link to a scholar [Jean Grondin] who has engaged deeply
> with
> >>> Gadamer's writings.  It is only an 8 page document but introduces
> Gadamer's
> >>> ideas in a seriously playful *way*
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> http://mapageweb.umontreal.ca/grondinj/pdf/play_festival_ritual_gadam.pdf
> >>>
> >>> The article is a fascinating interpretation of the centrality of play,
> >>> festival, and ritual in our ways of becoming human.
> >>>
> >>> Larry
> >>>
> >>> PS Greg,
> >>> The article also engages with the modern sense of self as preoccupied
> with
> >>> self-control
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Hi Larry,
> >>>>
> >>>> Seems that this may be a helpful resource: The International Journal
> for
> >>>> Dialogical Science.
> >>>>
> >>>> <http://ijds.lemoyne.edu/>
> >>>>
> >>>> Martin
> >>>>
> >>>> On Mar 25, 2012, at 9:55 AM, Larry Purss wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Martin,
> >>>>> thank you for your last clarification on Reddy's notions of the
> >>> relation
> >>>> of
> >>>>> 2nd person and 3rd person "ways of knowing".  Further on this topic
> of
> >>>>> "ways of knowing" I want to share a provocative quote from Joel
> >>>> Weinsheimer
> >>>>> in his book *Philosophical Hermeneutics and Literary Theory*.  He is
> >>>>> exploring Gadamer's notion that theory and validity do NOT *contain*
> >>>>> understanding. This quote also may contribute to the discussion of
> >>>>> technology.  Martin, I also remember you recommending that we read
> >>>> Hayden
> >>>>> White's insights. In the spirit of understanding understanding,
> Joel
> >>> is
> >>>>> attempting to highlight Gadamer's distinction between *theory* &
> >>>>> *philosophy*
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Greg,
> >>>>> I'm also sharing this quote because of the theme you were exploring
> >>> about
> >>>>> *the will to power* and the notion of *owning* that seems to be an
> >>>>> archetypal theme.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Gadamer's hermeneutic philosophy concludes that what is universal to
> >>>>> interpretation, if there is anythng universal at all, is not a canon
> of
> >>>>> interpretive REGULATIONS.....
> >>>>> It is, after all, primarily in industry, or more generally in
> >>> technology,
> >>>>> that theories find practical applications.  Even if students of
> >>>> literature
> >>>>> are repulsed by the notion of an interpretation industry, many still
> >>>>> cherish the notion that the IDEAL interpretation is that which is the
> >>>>> product of and is legitimated by applied theory and this suggests
> that
> >>>>> interpretation ideally consists of CONTROLLED production, of
> >>> subjectively
> >>>>> REGULATED creation.  Insofar as the ery purpose of literary or any
> >>> other
> >>>>> theory is to GOVERN practice, Gadamer is quite right to state, '
> Modern
> >>>>> theory is a tool of construction by means of which we gather
> >>> experiences
> >>>> in
> >>>>> a unified way and make it possible to dominate them'.  Offering
> >>> dominion
> >>>>> over literary experience, interpretation CONTROLLED by applied theory
> >>> is
> >>>> a
> >>>>> function of the WILL TO POWER". [page 30]
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Larry
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> "
> >>>>> __________________________________________
> >>>>> _____
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> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> >> Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar
> >> Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
> >> Department of Communication
> >> University of California, San Diego
> >> http://ucsd.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
> >> __________________________________________
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