Re: [xmca] Abstract to Concrete

[Christine Schweighart <schweighartc@gmail.com>]

Good evening,
Hmm, well if his is a response to Heidegger I'm even more stretched.
Maybe interest in his work was strangely interpreted in Information
Systems - where much scholarly work  seems to start with 'the ideas of
x', I have a feeling I start from another sphere altogether - but I'm
ambivalent about that too. I did once get as far as a foreword which
was distinguishing several meanings of the word 'work' - where  'work
of thinking that is going on in the 'text-work' work that attentive
reading can participate in'  - is flagged from the outset as most
valued.
 My 'work' starts much before such a refined moment of being.
Your manners are impeccable:) why would you be 'minding' them?
 Christine.


On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 4:50 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
> Good morning Christine, [and others listening in on this private/public
> forum].
>
> As I was reading your response, I was aware of the open public nature of
> our conversation. I was trying to get my bearings on which style of writing
> in which to *listen* and *read* your commentary. As I respond back, I am
> being reflective on the *type* of commentary and the *type* of
> intersubjectivity that I am *playing* with as form [medium]
> Christine, I believe there is built in risk [anxiety, dread?] that may
> accompany *going out on a limb* and playing with new styles of
> conversation.  With this caution I'm not sure of my audience [or how to
> address *us*]  and how intimate or *distanced* of a genre to *choose* to
> locate yours and my thinking out loud together?  With this caution, I am
> responding in a conversational format but am aware this choice may be
> idiosyncratic and not offer enough context for other readers.. However,
> this question I'm posing is one response to your commentary which follows.
> On Sat, Dec 1, 2012 at 2:44 AM, Christine Schweighart <
> schweighartc@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Larry and anyone wondering,
>> I made a big leap from your fragment - but it lit a train of
>> experience which crystalised in Covent Garden, swamped in expense and
>> elite refinement:) experiencing Handel's Tamerlano in 2010 - I'm still out
>> on ' The Muse' as aesthetic value..but its form in music was
>> directly connecting with its mood, which appears here in your
>> fragment.
>>
> [LP] This linking *aesthetic value* with *form in music* DIRECTLY
> connecting with its *mood* seems to be a notion of relational participation
> that may possibly be addressed to forms of writing as conversations.
>
>>
>
>  Yes, your reading follows mostly what was prompting me.
>> Your point: In his phrase *face of the other* is the UNIQUE *other* who if
>> categorized [pigeon holed] is totalized.
>> - I'm thinking about that still  - particular seems OK,  'totalized'
>> in your sense is  in the sense of 'categorised'  in that 'formal
>> logic' kind of way - next thing would be to start measuring and
>> counting.. That doesn't seem profound enough to me as a dynamic.
>> Levinas discusses that 'being' is already 'disturbing' , he's a
>> theological writer,
>
>
> [LP] Christine, I am ambivalent of how my values relate to Levinas
> perspective. My responses to follow will be *descriptive* of what I
> understand about Levinas ethical stance.   I do question and have doubts
> about how he is calling and reminding us how we *ought* to proceed.
>
>
>> Levinas  uses the idea of recurrence, but he also seems
>> to reside in a 'passivity of self' a theme recurring in his writing in
>> many ways - I'd have to work really hard  ( and it's beyond me) to
>> appreciate a locus of debate...
>>
> [LP] Christine, I believe this question is at the heart of the struggle to
> understand Levinas. I am also struggling to understand his perspective.
> However, you mentioned *locating an appreciative space for this debate*
> Greg has engaged this topic explicitly is his exploring *recognition* and
> has reminded me of the long tradition in the Western Tradition with this
> topic. The book *Bound by Recognition* questions if focusing on *mutual
> recognition* may be the source of *struggling*  Andy writes on
> *recognition* and the Hegelian response.  Levinas participates in a
> *tradition* with roots in Heiddegger and his focus on *mineness* Levinas
> Project is explicitly to challenge ontology and being [is] as foundational.
> For Levinas the ethical and moral *ought* PRECEDES ontology and
> epistemology. The *face of the other* for Levinas must be *answered* BEFORE
> any form of categorization or pigeon holing.
>
>
>> ''being and entities will turn out from the start to be important and
>> to be determinant for truth, but this distinction is also an
>> amphibology and does not signify the ultimate. ''
>> where meeting a person is moment of recognition
>>
> [LP] This term *ultimate* is a very STRONG claim
>
>>
>> {side bar} [LP1] as a symbol refers to a third speaker which is myself in
>> an earlier post where I first responded to Christine]
>>
>
>
>> [LP1] Christine, you then link *face of the other* with *dialogical
>> expression* and a PARTICULAR quality of relations.
>> > Next, you caution that THIS quality of witnessing *the face of the
>> other* may be lost in written text or shifted to a generalizable *everyman*
>> sure - it's a mystery. What Levinas brings in is a  strange  argument
>> though
>> " The recurrence of persecution  in the oneself  is thus irreducible
>> to  intentionality in which, even in its neutrality as a contemplative
>> movement, the will is affirmed. In it the fabric of the same,
>> self-possesion in a present, is never broken. When affected the ego is
>> in the end affected only by itself, freely. Subjectivity taken as
>> intentionality is founded on auto-affestion as an auto-revelation,
>> source of an impersonal discourse. The recurrence of the self in
>> responsibility for others, a persecuting obsession, goes against
>> intentionality, such that responsibility for others could never mean
>> altruistic will, instinct of 'natural benevolence,' or love. It is in
>> the passivity of obsession, or incarnated passivity, that an identity
>> individuates itself as unique, without recourse to any system of
>> references, in the impossibility of evading the assignation of the
>> other without blame..... " (Levinas, p112)
>>
>
>
>> then ' 'under accusation by everyone, the responsibility for everyone
>> goes to the point of substitution. A subject is a hostage.
>>  --- well that's one possibility....but where does it go?
>>
>
> "accused in its innocence, subjectivity in itself is being thrown back
>> on oneself. i.e accused of what the others do or suffer, or
>> responsible for what they do or suffer ....... this accusation can be
>> reduced to the passivity of the self only as a persecution, but a
>> persecution that turns into an expiation. ... Everything is from the
>> start in the accusative. (levinas)
>>
>> Basically then he locates a withdrawal and questions a beginning
>> arising in this passivity.
>> I couldn't 'do' such a thing to my children though -  nor do I think
>> I'd get them 'ready for the world' to follow such involutions! That's
>> not the kind of 'naked exposure' of a social world I enjoy..
>> Levinas,  Otherwise than being (1981) p112
>>
>  So if not passivity - a vitality?
>
> [LP] My answer is now to you and Levinas and Greg who I *read* as also
> exploring this topic. The question of *vitality* for me goes to the
> question of *agency* and what I term *dis-position* If one *chooses*
> intentionally to *open a space* for another to come into being is it
> possible to *develop* a sense of agency and *vitality* through ACTING
> within this way of orienting which is cultivated within a tradition.
> Christine, you mentioned Levinas participates within a theological
> tradition [Judaism] but also within Continental Philosophy. He is
> *answering* Heiddegger as a moral imperative. His *call* seems to expose
> one's *self* to a *naked social world*
> I don't have *THE answer* to Levinas but he does  generate *plural*
> responses  or a multude of *a answer* that I believe helps each of us to
> explore reflectively [privately and publically]our own *value
> presuppositions* which are implicit in each and every theory, episteme,
> techne, and practical wisdom.
> I personally intuitively *sense* possible *self*-formations which are
> AGENTIC which are oriented towards prioritizing the relational *rhythum of
> recurrence within each occurrence, which ethically may *seem* to be passive
> but acutally is a deliberate *dis-position* to *hear the other into voice*.
>
>> [LP1] Christine, you then shift to *othering* in the English essay form
>> which  RELIES on the quality of separation of audience through the
>> *construction*  of a particular type of reader - *the intelligent informed
>> reader*.
>>
>>
> CS  Perhaps I'm thinking of passivity , the art of positioning the
>> reader as a passive one 'so that the object comes to them'
>>  [LP1]In your final turn you remembered our earlier conversations on
>> *plurality* of forms of living. Plurality is NOT relative, or random.
>> Plurality is multiple [discourses, traditions, genres, EACH constituted
>> within effective history. Pluralism is NOT looking for universal truths,
>> nor is it relative.
>>  CS These are Kant's kind of universal truths ?? I'm just thinking
>> about this with my reading Ilyenkov holding me in this period.
>> [LP1] It is multiple and contrasting VALUES or NORMS which may be brought
>> into dialogue but NEVER made *equal*.
>>
> [LP2] Christine, *pluralism* is a term I borrow from Suzanne Kirschner's
> work. She is participating in a new *movement* with Divison 24 -Theoretical
> and Philosophical Psychology- of the American Psychological Association.
>  For example our exploration of *recognition* or my exploration of
> *intersubjectivity* or even the notion of *pluralism* are particular
> concepts with meanings within particular *traditions* or *genres*. The
> notion of *human development* is another example. Though plural they are
> NOT random or relative. Each particular meaning of *a* concept is multiple
> and there is NO *the* concept.
> *A* concept exists historically within *a* particular tradition or horizon
> of understanding. EACH use of the concept is situated within a tradition.
> The traditions [which express value *oughts*] can be further *developed*
> within conversations, and DIFFERENT forms of *reader* and *listener* and
> *writer* and *speaker* and *author authoring* [in other words different
> dis-positions engender and *evoke* different *moods*] keep recurring in
> rhythmical resonance through effective history. EACH OCCURRENCE though
> UNIQUE and never the same as a previous occurrence is participating within
> a rhythmical RECURRENCE of these *plural* conversations *through time*.
> This time can be *micro* as developed here in our current occurence as an
> event BUT is this micro moment ALSO transforming the rhythmical recuurence
> and therefore NEW NOVEL KINDS of *readers* and *writers* , listeners and
> speakers RELATIONALLY participating in an emerging mood which honours the
> *psychology of the other* as different and UNIQUE.
>
> I will pause with Nelle Morton's expression:*Hear the other into Voice*.
>
> This expression is an ethical and moral *dis-position* which is not
> *natural* but is *cultivated* and may develop new and novel agentic [not
> passive] ways of responding. This way requires feeling *safe* with
> pluralism, uncertainty, ambiguity, and a willingness to continually NOT
> know as understanding is fallible.
>
>
>> [LP1]Your final reference was to al-andulus which I *imagine* as a
>> historical moment when pluralism was honoured.
>> >
>>
>  CS yes it was a 'holding period' too. I'm intriqued as in circles
>> around Edward Said lectures etc this is assumed to be 'gone' and
>> questioning begins with 'wouldn't that be what we need?' - yet to me I
>> have 'lived' present day values which *are* such a 'recurrence' ,
>> 'it's all around' in Andalucia of the 1980's/90s - isn't it still ?-
>> were n't those ( victims of nostalgia?)  able to look and find what
>> they so want?
>>
> [LP] That is a BIG question. It brings to mind McLuhan's *acoustic space of
> the ear* which is more  intimate in contrast to *vision* which is more
> differentiated. I'm playing with the notion that THIS format may be *seen*
> or *heard* as a particular dis-position or *way* of understanding. I am now
> expressing hunches, and speculations, and *imaginary possibilities* but
> transforming recurrences into possibly novel rhythmic ways of reading,
> listening and recognition as new forms of *reading RESPONSE* as
> answerability.
>
>
>> [LP1] Christine, I may have mis-read or mis-understood some particular
>> points but I hope I captured the theme I saw moving through your commentary.
>> Thanks, Larry you did:)
>>
>> [LP1] I would like to pause here with a comment Huw made in response to
>> the concept of rhetoric grounded at its source within reading and
>> readers. The history and development of *reading* and our conscious
>> understanding of  reading as a phenomena I heard in your response
>> describing the distanced  intelligent scholarly reader. *Reading RESPONSE
>> theory* explores the PLURALITY of ways of reading. I wonder if a new way of
>> reading *as conversational* and *as dialogical* may be developing to *see
>> through* the intelligent scholarly reader who
>> is distancing from others [as a particular historically constituted  kind
>> or norm of reading]
>> As we explore the plurality of norms of reading [and the value
>> presuppositions within each type of reader] we may be developing a
>> new understanding of developmental psychology.
>>
>> If that is a way that helps more , more freely - ,, !!
>>
>> [LP1] Christine, I considered writing this off line as a more private
>> response, but I am questioning the boundaries between private and public
>> discourse  and the values and presuppositions embedded in these fuzzy
>> boundaries.
>>
>> yep,  -  ethicalities  of living in an IT mediated world - makes it so
>> much harder:) one step back , two forwards though..
>> Thanks again.
>>  Christine.
>>
>
> [LP] Thanks Christine.  I am ambivalent if this is too *private* a
> correspondence which is too *particular* for a public forum.  I do sense
> people are *playing* with these notions. I'm reminded of the time when
> books were becoming commodities and readers and writers were transforming.
> There were deliberate experiments with the way books were presented and
> what we now experience as a *typical* conventional book form was more
> fluid. The internet seems to allow experimentation with form. It may flop
> but I wanted to experiment and since you posted online I took the libery to
> respond in kind. I hope I was *minding* my manners??
> Larry
>
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