These files are maintained strictly for historical reference, research, and recordkeeping purposes,
and the content has not been altered or updated since archiving.
Content on this site may not meet current digital accessibility standards.
If you require an alternative, accessible format of any information found on this site,
please contact Bruce Jones, bjones@ucsd.edu to request an accommodation.
These files are maintained strictly for historical reference, research, and recordkeeping purposes,
and the content has not been altered or updated since archiving.
Content on this site may not meet current digital accessibility standards.
If you require an alternative, accessible format of any information found on this site,
please contact Bruce Jones, bjones@ucsd.edu to request an accommodation.
Tony,
Seems good to have a reason to mark out stark positions. Good motivation to produce...
Unfortunately, I'm not sure that my position is stark enough with yours to provide much fuel to the fire - mostly just smoke and mirrors.
Sure enough, I was playing somewhat fast and loose with metaphors ("the conveyor-belt of life" - certainly way too much!). And this line would suggest reading "production" in those terms.
But the sense (smysl) of production that I was after was not the estranged conveyor-belt production that results FROM alienated labor and results IN "the commodity". Rather, I had in mind the sense of production that comes from non-alienated labor (not very well expanded upon by Marx), labor that, as I read it, is infused with creativity and individuality (even if that individuality is made possible only through "the social").* This is the sense of "production" that I had in mind when I spoke of individuals being "produced" in and through contexts. I take this type of "being produced" to be key to what motivates us to act and do in our everyday lives.
I hope that doesn't take the wind out of your sails too much since it sounded like the other sense of "production" might have better inspired a thoughtful response about educational policy thinking in the US.
Regardless, I would love to hear the response that you had planned -- when you have some time again...
All the best,
greg
*And recall that in Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic, the individual and creative properties of the Slave's labor is what provides the potential (albeit unrealized potential) for the slave to realize his own self-consciousness and transcend immediacy. Thus, production liberates us from the here and now of the sensuous world.
Message: 6
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2010 20:07:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tony Whitson <twhitson@UDel.Edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Agency/Structure, Individual/Society,
Subject/Object
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.60L.1009282000310.20430@copland.udel.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
On Tue, 28 Sep 2010, Gregory Allan Thompson wrote:
> I prefer "transformed", but I think "produced" captures the sense
> very nicely as well.
I think of formative (incl. transformative) activity and productive
process as profoundly different affairs -- and I see the loss of awareness
of formation as activity involving way more than just production as a
seriously consequential failure of education discourse in the United
States.
Regretably, I won't be able to elaborate on this until after the
semester. For now, I can only mark a stark position here.
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca