SERIES: SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTIONS AND AUTHORS IN RELATIONAL CONSTRUCTIONISM-SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM

(October 2, 2020)

Diego Tapia Figueroa, Ph.D. and Maritza Crespo Balderrama, M.A.

“Praxis gives meaning to words.”

(Ludwig Wittgenstein)

John Shotter

We continue with John Shotter, Ph.D. (1937, Glasgow, Scotland, in the United Kingdom. Whittlesford-England, December 8, 2016). In 15 days, we will continue with another author.

·        Words are like hands with which we touch people’s faces. And, at the same time, you can see people being touched by their own words.

·        The important thing is dialogue; particularly the dialogue with the other, the dialogue with the diverse; the responsibility in the dialogue, this feeling with the other, choosing to be spontaneously involved. Aware of one’s own corporeality, in the ethical commitment to respond humanely to the other, in moving in complexity and uncertainty. It is thanks to joint action that we create new meanings.

·        We seek new ways of being with ourselves and with others, new ways, genuine and authentic, of being in the relationship with the other. We seek the creation of dialogues committed to the joint construction of other possibilities of social relations.

·        It is precisely in the moments that occur during encounters with others that shared feelings take place.

·        How can there be an unmistakable collaboration between people -that is- a type of collaboration in which all the participants involved continuously renew the common ground they share with each other?

·        Once we accept the transcendental role of our spontaneous bodily responses in understanding our expressions, that’s when we glimpse another explanation.

·        We must understand our greatest conscious abilities as social constructs, as achievements that we can only achieve with the help of others; achievements that we must conquer to achieve again and again – indeed, “again for the first time” – in each new and particular situation in which we find ourselves.

·        Rather than looking inward and backward in the past (to understand the causes) if what we want is to understand its functioning, we should look outward and forward, towards how we can create among ourselves, sensitively, in our spontaneous and unpretentious acts, ways of “walking” together within our very individual ways of acting, intellectually and deliberately, and how they can be understood by others around us.

·        How can we be changed? Our existence should be changed in essence, and that can only be achieved by being “moved” by the other or by otherness, in ways that one is not able to move by oneself.

·        The main function of language is not to represent things in the world, nor to give ‘external’ expression to already structured ‘internal’ thoughts, its function is the creation and maintenance of social orders. What matters is not how ‘I’ can use language, but how I should take ‘you’ into account in my use of language.

·        Each use of language is subject to the different “you” to which it is addressed.

·        What is it that moves us to speak in certain ways and not in others? Our ways of speaking are rooted in a seemingly disordered, diffuse, and ambiguous sphere of activity: joint action.

·        The human being and his world are not separate entities linked by a mechanical relationship. As a living being, the individual reacts to his surroundings; while being social remains in exchange with others.

·        The relationships between individuals and their environment then have a spontaneous, expressive, and creative quality. If we accept that we are responsive beings, it becomes difficult to draw a sharp separation between the interpersonal sphere and the person-world sphere.

·        Every expression has as its background a set of shared circumstances, which condition what we can say about reality or ourselves. If an individual wants to make sense, to be taken into account as such, his expressions must start from what is already shared.

·        However, a world of meaning is never complete, it has only been partially drawn. The expressions of individuals can also shape, and give a different shape to the environment and social relations.

·        … we cannot achieve a good kind of understanding of our every day “works” if we seek it by resorting only to traditional scientific methods, that is, by using only methods based on the use of theories and/or methods based on theories. The reasons I gave many years ago, were that even though modern psychology promised to discover our true nature in its experimental laboratories, in fact, it is only investigated there, it continues to happen when people are there, treated as if they were rats, machines, information processors, or any other non-human entity there, in the world around us.  while being responsible for the creation and maintenance of our human nature – as people within a culture with a long history of development – was, and still is, frequently ignored…

·        It’s like British oral historian Ronald Frazier’s answer to his analyst’s question, “What exactly do you expect?” Frazier replied, “Find, recreate a past with a certain certainty that I can put it behind me and get on with my life.” He could shape and shape his life while remaining rooted in his culture.

·        Attending to the practices implies showing the productive character of the epistemological and theoretical assumptions: “in the approach that is outlined here our supposed objects of study concern us less than the origin of our mechanisms and practices of inquiry … we are interested in the means and procedures we use to ‘socially construct’ the central theme of our research…”

·        … a new thought can originate within a group with these felt and imaginary possibilities, that is, spontaneously giving body to forms of things previously unknown to us, something quite impossible if we start with cognitive certainties. Such certainties will only lead to more elaborations of things already known; they will never be able to open up to unique novelties.

·        Overcoming Cartesian Anxiety: Learning to Think Partially While Still in the Midst of Uncertainty… feel the way forward in the present tense… an attitude present in poetic or allusive writings… the negative capacity of Keats.

·        … The ‘psychologist’s fallacy: Too often we forget that we learn our language within all sorts of ongoing intra-activities, activities in which we are involved with those around us when we do something. All our activities within a given culture are activities intertwined in language, activities intertwined in practice. Consequently, we need to remember – if we are going to engage in abstract, decontextualized, air-based talks – that our conversations also need to be intertwined conversations in practice. We have to take into account a particular activity in a particular context as we speak, and direct our conversation to our listeners as if they too were occupying this same context; because when we talk to someone, we are, of course, assuming that they are interested in what we have to say. This is what is involved when we speak and think systemically, think and talk-to. To contrast it with talking in the air, we might call it talking and thinking about the earth.

·        This need to contextualize – to give local habitation to the words we use, particularly those we use to name ‘things’ – gives rise to a perhaps surprising consequence. It means that there are two types of difficulties we can face in life, not just one. In fact, as Wittgenstein has made clear to us, many of our difficulties in our practical lives are not the kind of problems that we can solve, by applying a scientific-type methodology, with reason; nor are they “empirical problems” that we can solve by discovering something pre-existing but still unknown. They are difficulties of another type: they are relational or orientational difficulties, which have to do with discovering how to “go out” towards the initially indeterminate aspects of our environment with certain expectations and anticipations always ready to be used, so to speak, appropriate to find a way to “move” or “move forward” with them without misguiding ourselves by taking inappropriate next steps. Relevant anticipations have to do with feeling where we might go within our circumstances before we go there.

·        Therefore, instead of pointing to reliable and repeatable results that can be made accessible in a publishable way, so that they can be publicly criticized and tested, and then generalized to be applied in many different contexts, professional research serves a rather different purpose. They are based and oriented on the practical. They are concerned with getting a sense of “where we are” concerning our immediate environment, and the surrounding field or ‘panorama’ of real possibilities open to us for our next steps. Thus, unlike the idealized and de-contextualized nature of ‘coldly rational’ research, professional research deals with the details of our environment that are crucial to the performance of our actions. As Wittgenstein observes, acting in an idealized environment is like trying to walk on ice “where friction is lacking and so the conditions are in a sense ideal, but also for that reason we cannot move forward. We want to move forward; that is why we need friction. Back to rough terrain!” So instead of resulting in namable and objective ‘things’ in the world, the results of practical research are recorded, and accumulated, in our embodied capacities and sensibilities.

·        Genuine innovative changes in institutions and organizations are ‘profound’ changes in the sense that they are changes in our ‘ways’ of thinking, listening, “making connections” between events, ‘ways’ of speaking, etc. – in short, they are changes in our ‘ways’ of being someone, changes in the type of person we are, changes in our identity.

·        I suggest that you read the following statements slowly, making use of a ‘poetic’ style of inner speech, taking the time at the end of each to imagine a specific concrete situation:

·         We enter a new situation;

·         We are confused, perplexed, we do not know the way;

·         However, as  we ‘inhabit’ it, as  we ‘move’ within the confusion, a ‘something’, an ‘it’ begins to emerge;

·         It arises within the ‘contours of time’ or ‘time forms’ that become apparent in the dynamical relationships we can feel between our outgoing activities and their incoming results;

·         We get an image, we find that we can express that ‘something’ in terms of an image;

·         But not so fast, since we can find another, and another image more, and another more – Wittgenstein uses a city, a toolbox, the controls in the cab of a locomotive, all these as metaphors for different aspects of our experiences with the use of language …

·        Having gone through a series of images, we can come to a sense of the panorama of possibilities that causes them. We gain a sense of familiarity with these panoramas, so we can feel confident in how to move within them, and how to be able to figure out ways to continue within them. Therefore, the process of solving is not simply a matter of calculation or decision-making. It involves trials; moving within the panorama of possibilities; being spontaneously receptive to the consequence of each move; and judging which of them (or a combination of moves) best produces an attitude, an orientation that provides a way of relating to the situation that resolves the initial tension that arouses the initial confusion – since, to repeat, we are operating here, not in the sphere of realities but that of possibilities.

·        And we, as researchers, as stated above, change in such encounters. Since, by being involved, immersed in the “inner life” of others and the others in our environment, everything we do can be partially formed by being receptive to what they could do. Therefore, instead of objective knowledge of their nature, we get an orientation towards them, we grasp how to ‘follow’ them in terms of the possible ways they can respond to us.

·        Our living explorations and investigations of our ‘inner workings’, of our ‘inner movements’ of thoughtful feelings and felt thoughts to which we have to submit in our practice-based investigations, can be thought of as the equivalent, in the sphere of human encounters, to the less extensive (but perhaps even more focused) ‘self-disciplines’ to which skilled tennis players submit (both off the court and in the court), which allow them to be ready, ready to find an appropriate or relevant response, to whatever is ‘served’ by an opponent in the matches they play.

·        In other words, we are aiming at phronesis, a mode of ethical reasoning conducted from within a practice in which deliberation, reflection, and judgment all play a central role… Systems thinking, therefore, points not to any specific endpoint, or any finalized form of knowledge, but to our learning of how to conduct such experiments at the moment in a given practice as required.

My overall goal has to do with how we become a certain kind of person, someone who feels, so to speak, more ‘at home’ in human affairs, someone who knows how to ‘get around’ within them, so that at every moment they can figure out how to ‘continue’ within them so that everyone involved can ‘see’ what “is best”, given the resources available to them at that time. And what makes this kind of learning collaborative learning – although it is as individuals that we can develop a keen insight – is that it can only be achieved within our relationships with those around us, we cannot do it alone, separately from them.

·         “One of the main sources of our lack of understanding,” Wittgenstein notes, “is that we do not overlook the uses of our words. Our grammar lacks the property of synoptic vision. The synoptic vision is the means for understanding, which is precisely that we can see the links.” If we are to find our way within our own forms of life built through language, without being confused, we have to – so to speak – grasp the landscape of its internal links or its grammatical geography. But, firstly, to reach such a synoptic sense in its enormous complexity, and secondly, to stay away from the many attempts to see something much simpler than what it is, we have to investigate its internal geography very closely and endlessly.

·        In order to understand both the mode of functioning of the forms of poetic language in our lives, as well as the sphere of spontaneous, irrational, and impulsive behavior that lies in its essence, we have to resort to the poetic methods of Wittgenstein. Their methods do not operate on the limits of concepts or theories, elaborated by experts in seminar classrooms or research laboratories, but on the limits of certain uses – very useful in practice, but poetic – of very everyday words in relation to the critical points in the continuous execution of a practice. In this sense, it is decisive that this type of use of language does not lead us to concentrate on regularities but novelties. In other words: it is about concentrating on the new, unnoticed possibilities to continue – possibilities that are achievable for us in our present social circumstances, but that in certain spaces of time are present for us only in ephemeral moments. When we, through words that make an impression, can reach the point of noticing these novelties and being impressed by them in such a way that we react bodily (physically) to them, then we can often continue, not to solve what was initially seen as a problem, but from our new reactions, to follow and develop new socially understandable paths, in which the old problems become irrelevant.

·        To converse in new ways is to build new forms of social relations and to build new forms of social relationship… is to build new ways of being… for ourselves… This is how we are the origin and effect of conversational realities.

·        The characteristics of dilemmas are born in a culture that produces more than one possible ideal world, more than a hierarchical arrangement of power, value, and interest, social beings are confronted by, and have to deal with, dilemmatic situations as a condition of their humanity.

·        In this listening and responding we do not act in response to an inner plan, but we are sensitive “in” a situation, and we do what the situation requires.

·        In this sense, it is decisive that this type of use of language does not lead us to concentrate on regularities but novelties. In other words: it is about concentrating on the new, unnoticed possibilities to continue-possibilities that are attainable for us in our present social circumstances…

·        It is the process of collaborative-generative dialogue that connects, humanizes, and transforms us. John Shotter -in our adaptation, IRYSE-:

The Journey: uncertainty, chaos, complexity

·        Conversation is a journey, creative movement (uncertainty, chaos, complexity); it means we can’t control anything. Imagine a ship that is going to sail in an ocean with turbulent waters. It starts from one place, with a compass, intending to reach another place. In that journey, in crossed currents that it does not control -which it is impossible to control- it crosses space and a time -that it does not control either-, letting itself be carried away, accompanied by uncertainty, which it will learn to inhabit and, probably, will arrive at a new, unknown, unthinkable place. It’s another place. In these turbulences, which are chaos, the compass is useless, and we can only let ourselves go, trusting that some possibility will be created that continues to give meaning to the journey. Surrendered to movement, to the subtle vibrations of what opens. In a displacement, in a movement of meaning, of meanings, between uncertainty and what is in becoming, what does not yet exist. Like a ship that, in its navigation, is shaping the route, in letting itself be carried away by the current of water, the turbulence, its need for security (the compass), and its imagination that creatively builds the place -its destination- to which, in principle, it wanted to reach.

SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Shotter, J. (2001). Conversational realities: the construction of life through language.  Buenos Aires, Argentina. Editorial Amorrortu.

International Journal of Collaborative Practices: 1(1), 2009: 29-38. 3(1), 2012: 14-27. 4(1), 2013: 1-2 1. 6(1), 2016: 1-14.

Shotter, J. (2013).  Wittgenstein and the roots of social poetry in spontaneous bodily reactions: the field.  In Deissler, K. & McNamee, S.  (Ed) Filo and Sofía in dialogue: the social poetry of therapeutic conversation.  (pp. 84-90) Ohio, USA: Ed. A Taos Insitute Publication.

Tapia Figueroa, Diego, Thesis (2018) for the Ph.D. with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and the TAOS INSTITUTE.

Taos Institute page containing books and publications by John Shotter:

English translation of Bruno Tapia Naranjo.