Re: [xmca] Alfred Schütz

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

Martin,
Thank you for your very focused and penetrating summation of *inner form*
as *style*.

For today, I will explore a single line of thought.

I wrote,


 Effective playing as having its *own* being and *we*
> enter this play and get *taken up* and *carried* along within the play.
Not
> privleging either *subjective* consciousness or *objective* consciousness
> but rather privileging the play in which subjectivity and objectivity have
> their *ground* [metaphorically]

In your reply, you partially answered,

A "gesture" is a movement, an action, something understood not
intellectually but as outlining a structure in and of the world. Gesture
requires taking up a position in the world, and sharing that position with
another. Gesture has style.

I want to reflect on the phrase gesture requires *taking up* a position
which may be interpreted as speaking of *will* . I want to put your  phrase
in play with Gadamer's position as the world having its *own* position. In
my answer to your statement outlining inner form and style is it valid to
ask the question,

Could it be that the world *takes us up* into positions, shared with
others??  In other words could you and I be taken up into the style
of specific sociocultural worlds *as* playful enactments that have their
own  *being* expressing the poly or multiple forms and structures of our
interrelationships?  The relation between *taking up* and *being taken up*
seems to be a *dance* that must be considered when reflecting on style
as the ensemble of gesture and speaking.

In 1960 Gadamer wrote an article [The Nature of Things and the Language of
Things] which can be accessed as a chapter in his book "Philosophical
Hermeneutics"

On page 75 Gadamer writes,

It seems to me that such an appeal to the nature of things finds its
limitation in a common assumption that remains unquestioned and dominates
all these attempts at the restoration of the autonomy of things.  It is the
assumption that human subjectivity is will, an assumption that retains its
unquestiod validity even where we posit being-in-itself as a limit to the
determination of things by man's will. In the nature of the case, this
means that these critics of modern subjectivism are not really free at all
from what they criticize, but only articulate the opposition from the other
side.  In contrast to the one-sidedness of Neo-Kantianism, which takes the
progress of scientific culture as its guideline, they pose a one-sidedness
of a metaphysic of being-in-itself, which shares with its opponent the
predominance of the detrmination of will."

The notion of *taking up* a position and the notion of *being taken up* and
carried along *in* a position speaks to *style* as not merely the ensemble
of gesture and speaking as enactments but adds  sociohistorical worlds as
intimately participating in the enactment of inner form?

Larry





On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 6:13 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> Martin
> Thanks for this lead to Elena Cuffari. I will respond after reading the
> article.
>
>
> For others interested in this approach fusing phenomenology, pragmatics,
> and gestural studies see the following link to TESIS [Toward an Embodied
> Science of Intersubjectivity]
> Martin, I ppreciate your continuing engagement in conversations on this
> theme.  Your explanation of *inner* meaning of words was very helpful See
> the link to TESIS
> http://tesisnetwork.wordpress.com/members/
>
> Larry
>
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
>
>> Larry,
>>
>> I wasn't trying to take the discussion in any specific direction, but
>> Greg expressed curiosity about Merleau-Ponty's views on language. M-P wrote
>> quite a bit about language acquisition: he held the Chair in Child
>> Psychology and Pedagogy at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952.
>>
>> I find it interesting that M-P, like LSV, drew from Humboldt's writing on
>> language. Specifically, and again like LSV, he employs the notion of the
>> "inner form" of speech. When this topic has been discussed here on xmca we
>> have had a tendency to say that the inner form, what LSV terms 'meaning' as
>> distinct from 'sense,' is fixed and objective, rather like the dictionary
>> definition of a word.
>>
>> But dictionary definitions are written, and children don't hear the
>> definitions of words as they learn their first language. (If they do, I
>> imagine they ignore them.) M-P describes the inner form instead as a "style
>> of speaking," an organization prior to representation, an "immanent
>> meaning" to which the speaker has a "corporeal intentionality," a texture
>> which is grasped.
>>
>> It helps to know that M-P articulated an account of perception as in
>> general a practical  involvement in the world, in which each object is
>> always given only partially, incompletely and from a perspective, while at
>> the same time other perspectives are tacitly adumbrated, as are the other
>> things around the object. Each object mirrors all others. We are always in
>> a situation, a nexus of interrelationships into which our body too is
>> entangled. What he says about the word, then, is what he says about any
>> material entity. "Style" is the way an object invites, demands, a response
>> from us.
>>
>> A child learns language in the here and now of concrete objects. As LSV
>> pointed out, words seem first to be taken by a young child as aspects,
>> features of the objects they name. A "gesture" is a movement, an action,
>> something understood not intellectually but as outlining a structure in and
>> of the world. Gesture requires taking up a position in the world, and
>> sharing that position with another. Gesture has style. To say that the
>> 'inner form' of a word is a gesture is to say that its meaning owes
>> everything to its corporeality - there is no word that is not being spoken
>> and heard. As spoken, a word is always a figure against an unspoken ground,
>> an island in a sea of activity. Dictionary definitions, in contrast, are
>> merely speech about speech, in which there can only be an external and
>> conventional relationship between word and meaning.
>>
>> Consequently, I'm not sure about the centrality of reflection that you
>> emphasize. Notice that M-P writes:
>>
>> "On the condition that I do not reflect expressly upon it, my
>> consciousness of my body immediately signifies a certain landscape about
>> me..."
>>
>> In other words, we have consciousness in/of the world *prior* to
>> reflection, and the most important task is to grasp that. This is not to
>> say that reflection is unimportant, but by definition it is something
>> secondary, and derivative.
>>
>> Martin
>>
>> p.s.: worth a look:
>> Cuffari, E. (2011). Gestural sense-making: Hand gestures as
>> intersubjective linguistic enactments. Phenomenology and the Cognitive
>> Sciences. doi:10.1007/s11097-011-9244-9
>>
>>
>> On Apr 28, 2012, at 6:16 PM, Larry Purss wrote:
>>
>> > Andy, Mike, Martin
>> >
>> > Thanks for this lead.  I have been reading Gadamer's response to
>> Habermas
>> > and the interplay between his notion of *traditions* and Habermas
>> notion of
>> > *emancipation* within social theory.
>> >
>> > The two chapter's of Martin's book will help further the conversations
>> on
>> > these themes.
>> >
>> > Martin, your conversation with David on the interplay of realization and
>> > instantiation and the centrality of the *relation between* these
>> concepts
>> > seems central to this discussion.
>> >
>> > I also wonder about the interplay between realization and reflection and
>> > Gadamer's notion of multiple TYPES of reflection. Assertive reflection,
>> > thematic reflection, and what Gadamer names as  *effective reflection*
>> > where one engages with developing the skills to enter and participate
>> > effectively in playing the games without holding back and *merely*
>> playing
>> > at playing the game.  Effective playing as having its *own* being and
>> *we*
>> > enter this play and get *taken up* and *carried* along within the play.
>> Not
>> > privleging either *subjective* consciousness or *objective*
>> consciousness
>> > but rather privileging the play in which subjectivity and objectivity
>> have
>> > their *ground* [metaphorically]
>> >
>> > Martin, I'm not sure if this was the direction you were taking
>> > theconversation, but it what I interpreted you saying.
>> >
>> > Larry
>> >
>> >
>> > On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 3:51 PM, mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Hi Andy et al -
>> >>
>> >> Martin's book, the science of qualitative research has a chapter that
>> >> traces Kant-Husserl-
>> >> Schutz - BergerLuckman that we r reading at Lchc. It helped me a lot to
>> >> sort out this branch
>> >> of thought. It is followed by a chapter that traces Heidegger - Merleau
>> >> Ponty- garfinkle.
>> >>
>> >> I have heard there is an electronic version, but do not know how to get
>> >> it. Working from actual hard copy!
>> >> Mike
>> >> On Apr 28, 2012, at 10:19 AM, Andrew Babson <ababson@umich.edu> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> He was very influential to Garfinkel, and so from an intellectual
>> >>> historical perspective, the development of ethnomethodology,
>> >>> conversation analysis and modern sociolinguistics.
>> >>>
>> >>> On 4/28/12, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>> >>>> I'd just like to share the attached article, written in 1945 by
>> Alfred
>> >>>> Schuetz, a refugee from the Frankfurt School living in New York,
>> like so
>> >>>> many others. In the article he appropriates Wm James, GH Mead and J
>> >>>> Dewey, whilst coming from the Pheneomenology of Husserl, to adapt the
>> >>>> concepts of Pheneomenology to social theory. It is quite
>> interesting. He
>> >>>> remains, in my view within the orbit of Phenomenology, but readers
>> will
>> >>>> recognise significant points of agreement with AN Leontyev's Activity
>> >>>> Theory. What he calls "Conduct" comes close to "Activity," and he
>> >>>> introduces the concept of Action which is certainly the same as it is
>> >>>> for CHAT, and instead of "an activity" (the 3rd level in ANL's
>> system)
>> >>>> he has "Project." But although this project has the same relation to
>> >>>> Action, it is a subjectively derived project posited on the world,
>> >>>> rather than project discovered in the world, and having a basically
>> >>>> societal origin. This is the point at which I think he confines
>> himself
>> >>>> to Phenomenology, and fails to reach a real social theory. The whole
>> >>>> business about "multiple realities" which gives the article its
>> title is
>> >>>> very tedious, but actually is valid in its basics I think.
>> >>>> Some of us on this list may appreciate him. He's a recent discovery
>> for
>> >> me.
>> >>>> Andy
>> >>>> --
>> >>>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >>>> *Andy Blunden*
>> >>>> Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1
>> >>>> Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
>> >>>> Book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608461459/
>> >>>>
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