I'm kinda liking this Lerner dude's take on the evolution of subjectivity through modernization. Seems to me like a way of describing factors that go into the construction of a post-structural self - one that is adaptable to both deep structure (say, culture) and structure more palpable to perception (such as microsocial interaction).
I am so jealous of anyone who's already done with Paula's paper! And, I'm kinda....having fun (!) re-reading Mumford (1963) after Chris made more of it legible to me with his presentation yesterday. :-)
I'm just over half done with the paper. I'm enjoying what I now see as a merger in Mumford of the material and the ideological, to wit:
"...instantaneous personal communication over long distances...is the mechanical symbol of those world-wide cooperations of thought and feeling which must emerge, finally, if our whole civilization is not to sink into ruin" (241).
The recordability of such instantaneous personal communication is one example of "the new permanent record" which "suggest[s] a new relationship between deed and record, between the movement of life and its collective enregistration: above all, they demand a nicer sensitiveness and a higher intelligence. If these inventions have so far made monkeys of us, it is because we are still monkeys" (245).
;-) Gimme a banana!
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I've actually had a few wild perceptions of being potentially able to alter reality - especially time - (and no, I wasn't under any influence), but they always seem ... out of ken. Not real. But here I am reading Mattelart for Paula's class, and he quotes McLuhan...
Participants and actors ìseek to program events rather than to watch themÖthese ëeffectsí appear before their ëcauses.í At instant speeds the cause and effect are at least simultaneousÖ.this dimensionÖ naturally suggests Ö the need to anticipate events hopefully rather than to participate in them fatalisticallyî (1974, in Mattelart p. 125-126).
And I've been on such good behavior!!!
I had a revelation about "normative" this evening. For me, norms are the things people actually do, which frequently doesn't coincide (to varying degrees) with what people say they should do - their "rules." Interpreting is my easiest example: people set up a communicative rule to take turns. But the norm develops such that there are overlaps and interruptions. Watch Steph's head implode! :-)
To conceive of "normative" as the ideal image someone holds is counterintuitive from my typical usage. I would use the term "prescriptive" to describe a theoretical viewpoint that implies things ought to be a particular way. And why this matters in research (watch me speculate) is because if I believe things ought to be a certain way, then my methodology and findings are going to reflect a comparative judgment (even if it is covert) on any deviation between how things "are" and what I think the "ought to be."
According to Lippmann, if other human beings' behavior "crosses" mine, is "dependent" upon me, or is "interesting" to me, then that's a rough definition of the boundaries of "public affairs" about which one may have "public opinions" (29).
Lippmann's summary of reasons why people wind up with disparate pictures of events, issues, etc that require some kind of decision-making seems relevant. Why do "the pictures in peopleís heads" lack correspondence with "the world outside?" We all have limited access to facts through ìartificial censorship, the limitations of social contact, the comparatively meager time available in each day for paying attention to public affairs, the distortion arising because events have to be compressed into very short messages, the difficulty of making a small vocabulary express a complicated world, and finally the fear of facing those facts which would seem to threaten the established routine of [peopleís] livesî (30).
(btw - 15 (!) people attended the comm grad stduent meeting yesterday but you'll have to wait for the minutes to find out what's what.)
Stephen has been arguing, I'm starting to think, for a blog composed of or otherwise enacting representative Public Opinions, while I have been arguing for a site for the expression of representational public opinions.
At least our debate has been carried out in public (apparently -?- generating an impression that one or both of us is "really mad"?)
"Until we know what others think they know, we cannot truly understand their acts." Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, 13.
The general thrust of class discussion on Day 2 seemed to be toward identifying the traditions of
Dewey - Habermas
and
Heidegger - Derrida & Levinas.
I appreciated Paula's mode of eliciting what we thought to build toward this knowledge rather than just telling us, but now I want to "just be told!" Does anyone have a sense of which category these different strands of theorizing belong to, and why? The four overall categories Paula identified in the syllabus are: liberal, marxist, feminist, and postcolonial theories of comm and media theory.
My guess {gulp} is that Dewey-Habermas are "liberal" and Heidegger - Levinas, Derrida are "marxist."
OK, so history repeats itself, right? This is what I thought reading the last section of Mattelart's chapter 2 (p. 48-52). How to reach a wider public than those I already have regular contact with? Newspapers, serial stories, and feuilletons were used to do it in the mid-19th century, blogs may be one of the 21st's equivalents. I have to say I am drawn to Cesar de Paepe and his notion of public service:
I'm thinking, only on p. 30, that it makes sense to me why so many intellectuals commit suicide. The quote by historian Douglass McKie suggests a hands-off policy from government toward business until business goes bad, when a moral discourse is invoked. The blatancy of fear-based policy decisions in the relations between nations is no less today than it was then.
I'm puzzled by this though: "The tension between the logics of negotiation and those of security/insecurity was too tangible to render credible the first efforts to construct a system for regulating international relations" (30). Meaning it was so real that it couldn't be faced? Or accepted as requiring significant, deliberate, and direct mediation? I'm not disputing Mattelart's judgment, but wondering about the intensity of denial, and how that still plays out in so many ways and places.
Aha! A reference for something I've been struggling to explain: "logical confusions we find ourselves trapped within (like flies in a fly bottle).
If I'd read this about three years ago maybe I'd not have dug myself in so deep! No doubt the "therapeutic discourse" runs through and out of me.
Before I get on with that though, I found characterizations of Briankle and Stephen that seemed to good not to share:
Briankle: ìno one in the Heideggerian inheritance has any time for information exchange.î (17)
Stephen: ìA cheerful sense of the weirdness of all attempts at communication offers a far saner way to think and liveî (30).
I missed it! Off to a great start! :-) Rumor has it, though, that Paula was warm and friendly (counter to scuttlebutt about a certain degree of inaccessibility).
Our Aussie colleague missed it too - I didn't hear from her yesterday, so I hope that means she's en route. Does anyone know?
I know several of you said "hello" to me and I apologize for being so immersed in my own drama of proposal deadline that I wasn't expressive of it being good to see you again. It is good to see you again and I'm looking forward to some passionate engagement about the differences between liberal, marxist, feminist, and postcolonial theories of comm and media theory. Do you know how to tell the differences among them? I am pretty sure that I don't - at least not as often as I'd like (and no where near the ideal of "always").
