Re: [xmca] primitive language, primitive thought

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

My God, Larry!! Are you saying I have lived so long I have now internalized
post-modern discourse through the substitution of timely
fragments that allow new, potentially productive understandings, to develop?

I brought in the Marx in an attempt to illuminate a knot of issues around
the concept/practice of romantic science.(Besides, I am trained as a
rat/sophomore learning theorist so fragments are all I can muster!). And
that passed along by Tony Wilden who once worked at UCSD of all places.

In my own after-school work, I find repeatedly that the
antimonies/ tension/contradictions related to class, race, gender, age
..... are palpably "there" , running through my body, in often surprising
and revealing moments. Ditto the formal/informal antimony, which is much on
our minds these days at LCHC.

The conceptual dualities in the medical field are different, at least at
the level of restoration of brain injury. In that field, Oliver Sachs seems
an appropriate example of the kind of romantic science that Luria
promoted-- again, by my interpretation. More than one way to get it right,
which is a good thing given the infinite number of ways there are to get it
wrong!

mike


On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 7:23 AM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> Mike,
> I have been reflecting on your comment,
>
> Its as if the authors writing in the 1920's were encaptulating the late
> 19th century armchair anthropologists. That this kind of thinking persists
> to the present day as the everyday ideology of European Americans strikes
> me as significant.
>
> I have also been reflecting on how we approach trying to clarify the
> shared ideals informing  multiple CHAT perspectives. You  mentioned that
> how we understand the "both/and" of the various romantic and enlightenment
>  ideals within our day to day practices  is one way of reflecting on this
> theme.
>
> You earlier offered this FRAGMENT of text from the young Marx to focus our
> discussion on  the "both/and" as an overcoming of the antimonies that
> currently play out between spiritualism and materialism:
>
> It is only in a social context that subjectivism and
> objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity cease to
> be antinomies, and thus cease to exist as such antinomies. The resolution
> of the THEORETICAL contradictions is possible ONLY through practical means,
> only through the PRACTICAL energy of man.
>
> Mike, this approach of offering FRAGMENTS of text that you show us or
> present to us [as presents or gifts] to OPEN and to ponder and to
> GENERATE further QUESTIONS  seems to present presents as a particular
> method that may hold significance.
> If this approach to writing can be seen as a particular KIND of writing
> engendering a particular KIND of "reader" [who is IN mind -spiritual??] we
> may have a particular practice developing before our eyes which engenders a
> less assertive KIND of knowing [as certainty, predictability, and
> repeatability] and brings forth a more dialogical, conversational method
> that privleges acknowledgement within particularity, uniqueness,
> idiosyncratic FRAGMENTS as an ideal practice.
>
> I'm circling around this hermeneutical notion of "seeing through"
> enlightenment OR romanticism as SYSTEMS and shifting focus to the FRAGMENTS
> "read" in a "timely" or historical AWARENESS.
> I will end with David's metaphor of rusty LINKS in the chain AS FRAGMENTS
> and Ivan's suggestion that we not see these multiple links as  proceeding
> FROM the past as LINEAR, but use a metaphor of MESH as FIGURE and the
> FRAGMENTS weaving together through multiple rusty links.
>
> I will end with how I opened, exploring the term *encapsulated* as a
> container with flexible boundaries which expresses an ideology that seems
> to be a subjective choice but actually expresses a WAY of life [and a
> particular configuration of "both/and"
>
> Larry
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 9:01 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It appears that the God of Serendipity has intervened in recent
>> discussions
>> of cultural difference,
>> primitivism, etc.
>>
>> For reasons extraneous to this discussion, I have been reading *Mutiny on
>> the Bounty*. The crew has made it to Tahiti and the young narrator who is
>>
>> there officially to write a dictionary for purposes of facilitating future
>> trade, is put under the guardianship of one of the Tahitian nobility,
>> Hitihiti. The narrator, eager learner that he is, makes the following
>> observation concerning his host.
>>
>> "Hitihiti spoke the Tahitian language as only a chief could, for the lower
>> order, as in other lands, possessed
>> vocabularies of no more than a few hundred words. He was interested in my
>> work and of infinite use to me, thought, as with all his countryman,
>> mental
>> effort fatigued him if sustained for more than an hour or two."
>>
>> Its as if the authors writing in the 1920's were encaptulating the late
>> 19th century armchair anthropologists.
>>
>> That this kind of thinking persists to the present day as the everyday
>> ideology of European Americans strikes me as significant.
>>
>> mike
>>
>> mike
>> __________________________________________
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>> xmca mailing list
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>
>
>
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