Forms as suspended time-space emerging from dialogical dynamics.
Expanding Bertau’s (2012) reading of Sidtis & Kreiman (2012) for
interdisciplinary purpose.
DRAFT
Maria C. D. P. Lyra
LabCCom – Universidade Federal de Pernambuco
Abstract
1
From so simple a beginning
Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful
Have been, and are being, evolved
Charles Darwin
The reflections that follows aim to contribute to a general framework for
integration of different domains of science, specially concerning with the
biological and social sides of human nature and particularly related do brain
and selves. The start point for these reflections is Sidtis and Kreiman’s (2012)
paper and Bertau’s (2012) comment on their paper, focusing on voice as a
privileged phenomenon she presents her view of relational self, inmersed in
language as symbolic human activity, supported by a dialogical informed
perspective conceiving language as alive and dynamic phenomena.
Highlighting the voice as an embodied, concrete device for communicative
purpose Bertau emphasizes the fruitful contribution of the results described by
Sidtis and Kreiman that I fully agree. Moreover, voice relates the one that
produces and one that answers involved in a sense of wholeness both
identified in the brain and in the features that voice encapsulates as is
stressed by Sidtis and Kreiman (2012). Bertau’s comments emphasize two
important points in order to enhance an integrative perspective that
particularly motivated the present reflections. First, her critical remark that the
premise subjacent to Sidtis and Kreiman writings that empirical facts, resulting
from neuropsychological studies have a more scientifically and trustfully
status,
therefore,
characteristics
of
gives
credibility
“phenomenological
to
the
“subjective
perspectives”
used
approaches”
in
socio-
psychological approaches to voice. This point of view somehow excludes the
other way around, the possibility that the “phenomenological perspectives”
2
can illuminate brain’s investigations. The second point deals with Bertau’s
careful elaboration of the quality of the dialogical relations established and the
nature of the selves required by a dialogical perspective in which voice and
language exhibit their fundamental role. These considerations aims to
enhance our integrative enterprise on how human sciences can contribute to
reflections on brain functioning.
Starting from a short summary regarding the inescapability of science as
interpretation of reality, I elaborate on the fundamental dimensions of time,
space, relations and individuals inside dynamic complex systems. These
systems develop towards emergent patterns of order allowing for qualitative
leaps. Subsequently, I discuss the quality of the system of relationship that
characterizes dialogical processes in which a dialogical self emerges and
develops elaborating on the concept of position, form and signs. These ideas
conduct towards the notion of abstraction and displacement, as a major
achievement of human dialogical processes.
1. Science is interpretation
Science is a human construction that results from the desire to understand the
world and ourselves (facing always an epistemological obstacle through
dynamic ways of thinking from which new questions always emerge,
according with Bachelar, 2002/1938). Within other forms of knowledge
construction resulting for this general motivation, science requires ontological
and epistemological assumption systematically – according to certain rules linking our mental constructions and the nature of reality the world is
3
constituted. It is the change on the conceptions about the linkage between
human mental constructions and the quality of the reality the world is
constituted that results in changes in scientific knowledge (paradigmatic shifts
as Kuhn conceives it, xxxx). Thus, change can occur due to improvement of
new technological apparatus but our minds always need to interpret these
“new data” and major changes are due to new “ways of thinking” about “new”
but also “old data”. The corollary of this very short summary is that human
interpretation is at the core of scientific knowledge. Thus aiming to establish
an integrative thinking linking different domains of science we need to take to
the foreground this interpretative character.
1.1. Space and time: system of relations and individuals
I start by the pervasive dimensions of space and time. The physical world,
and us, as physical beings, need to be located in space and inserted in time.
However, it is the conception of how time and space relates that makes
emerge the fundamental role of relations. We learned from Einstein relativity
theory the interdependency between time and space dimensions, also present
in Bergson (xxxx) thinking. One demonstration of that is the perception of
motion. Perception of movement by an observer depends of the relationship
between two systems: the first system where the observer is in relation to the
other system in which motion is observed. Moreover, the illustration of the
omnipresent necessity to conceive relations and the interdependency of these
physical dimensions can be illustrated through thought experiments or, in
other words, through the constructive power of our capacity to create new
ways for understanding our world. Thus, relations – in the present case, the
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system of relation that makes emerge a dialogical self – is a fundamental
feature of physical dimensions in which psychological functioning is
embedded. The transformation of our ways of thinking creating new
paradigms for interpret relations is obligatory.
The study of our complex system of relations where a dialogical self emerges
requires a transformation of our ways of interpret and understanding self and
relationships. Our current ways of thinking are tied to the idea of individuals
conceived as separated entities and it is necessary a transformation of our
“thought habits” (Marková, 1989?) in order to conceive relationships.
Moreover, we need to grasp both relationships and individuals because a
dialogical perspective assumes self as an individual despite perennial
immersed in self-others relationship (xxxx).
My first task is to pave the way to present the idea that both relations
and individuals exist together. Relations do not dilute the individual – the
privileged approach assumed in biological investigations framework -- into
relationship neither individuals exist outside relationships; individual and
relationships require to be analyzed together. Moreover, biological and social
systems are complex developmental systems, open systems always changing
in irreversible time. They exhibit its development through global new
organization of the relationships and individuals that compose these systems
creating qualitative new pattern of organization. These patterns transform the
relationships and nature of the individuals involved in these relationships
(Lyra, 2012). I propose a mutual infeeding of perspectives that can relate
biological and social sides of human beings, through highlighting relations and
5
individuals as major tenets – and start points - for both biological and social
features of human subject.
The eternal immersion of individuals – physical, biological and social – in a
system of relationships that evolves through time comprises what Bakhtinian
dialogism conceives as a simultaneity of different places (or positions)
(Bahktin, xxxx). Separatedeness and simultaneity are omnipresent and
interdependent. Thus, the perception of each one is due from different places
– a time/space occupied only by me (Bakhtin, xxxx) -- and I can see parts of
you that you don’t see and the reverse is also true; you can see me from
perspectives never reached by myself. The perception of anything can only
happen against the perspective in which we are in relation to others.
Moreover, these others and myself are engrained in sociocultual world in
which their different points of view – or voices -- embrace an array of diverse
places and times relating self to others. This perennial self-other dynamics
create the internal wotld of the self, a self able to dialogue with itself through
semiotic or symbolic means (xxxx). This complex developmental system
highlightes the immersion of the self on relationships, with others and with
itself as separated and single, yet necessarily embedded in these
relationships (Bakhtin, xxxx; Valsiner, xxxx etc). The embedness of the
physical, biological and social phenomena in dynamic relationship envolving
through time and having and requiring relationships and individuals is a
complex reasoning to conceive of and to grasp on. However, the need to
conceive of individuals and relations as having an interdependent existence is
not unfamiliar even to physical systems. Relations require individuals in
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relations as ontological requirement, even if we consider the physical reality of
Brownian movement of the individual particles interacting in a fluid (ImpérioHamburger, Carvalho & Pedrosa, 2003; Lyra, 2007).
Before elaborating on how the system of relationship that links the whole brain
and the whole self give birth to positions as a fundamental achievement of
self’s dynamics I start from how new patterns of order results from complex
developmental systems existing in irreversible time. Moreover, they allow
qualitative leaps creating qualitative distinctions, that are fundamental to be
considered in analyzing diverse domains, particularly concerning with our
biological and social domains.
1.2. Dynamics of complex developmental systems: emergent patterns of
order
Systems that evolve in irreversible time are complex open systems, as is the
case of all living systems (xxxx). They exhibits their development through
global new organizations, in other words, through qualitative new pattern of
organization.
Human development – physical, biological and social – is embedded in a
complex open system of relationships characteristically following the
reasoning of what is called the dynamic of complexity (xxxx). A system is
conceived as an array or collection of relations that exists in continuous
interaction. If we adopt a conception of irreversible time – as is the case of
some physical, but, definitely all biological and social systems – it means that
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each interacting component of the system is perennial possible to change and
to modify the others ones through time passing (xxxx; Lyra, xxxx ). The
dynamics of these complex systems required new ways of understanding
their developmental characteristics and their emergent order. Emergent
ordered patterns are thus at the heart of this new understanding of nature.
The second law of thermodynamics deals with order and structure of the
universe. Order decreases (entropy increases) if does not exists an external
energy source (coming from another system in which it is embedded) to feed
the system under study. The systems that develop through time presenting
emergent dynamic order patterns, with crescent levels of complexity that
correspond to qualitative new functional and structural characteristics (van
Geert, 2003; xxxx). In these conditions comes to the foreground the
complexity of relationships instead of the behavior of the participants as selfcontained individual therefore, individuals as isolated unities.
The idea of crescent complexity and emergent order as resulting from the
totality of the system in a historical time come into view, initially, to understand
physical chemical phenomena in field called non-linear thermodynamics
(xxxx). Under the external conditions of supply of energy for the system there
is no entropy and the system is capable to present spontaneous order
structures through a process called autocalitle. Thus, these systems have a
capacity to self-organize under the conditions of a constant energy supply
(from outside the system). Living systems, including psychological systems,
belong to this type of systems in which we can recognize emergent
organizational order patterns exhibiting a crescent complexity (xxxx). More
8
recently, mainly in the last decade of 20th century, raised the interest in the
dynamics of complexity, more specifically, how order and complexity emerge
and is maintained, sometimes in a sudden and unexpected way. The study of
ecosystems in biology is an example of the study of complex system focusing
on how equilibrium and order can be achieved (van Geert, 2003).
These systems are dependent on their history and they can only be studied
from a probabilistic point of view; there are many possibilities to achieve the
same order stage (equifinality) (Gottlieb, 2003). Von Bertalanffy created the
term “general systems theory” for these systems that need to be studied from
the point of view of the totality of interactions that belongs to the system in
opposition to the study of each interactional unit per se.
A dialogical approach requires the mutuality of co-constructed selves
immersed in a complex system of relationships. Up to now, I have introduced
the idea that relationship and individuals compose a complex dynamics that
require the understanding of how new order is achieved in historical time. The
particular interest of this paper is the qualitative leap that allows the
emergence of a dialogical self, a human self that has the human capacity for
abstraction and symbolic functioning. Therefore, our main focus is the
threshold that links and distinguishes our biological and social dimensions
concentrating on the characteristics of the qualitative jump that make emerge
a dialogical and semiotic self.
2. Qualitative leap: biological and social dimentions
9
The reasoning developed up to now can be summed up in the following way:
The interdependency of time and space is imposed (inescapable) into our
physical existence and relationship and individuals emerge from this
interdependent reality. Systems of relations evolve and change through
historical irreversible time resulting in new global patterns of order in which
individuals are immersed. Which are the characteristics of the system of
relationships that make emerge a dialogical self? I propose to follow three
guiding principles. Firstly wholeness of functioning occurring in the brain and
in the self, as is indicated by Sidtis and Kreiman regarding the familiar voice,
gives rise to the notion of position. Position is a relational and spacial concept
as far its need a perspectival notion refering to spatial relationships; in a
dialogical dynamics it refers to whom you are positioned – from whom is the
voice and to whom it is addressed - therefore requires mutuality. Besides, it
includes time because positional moves in space and changes constantly as
time passes and dialogue continues. Therefores, brain and selves do exist as
positioned totalities constantly facing the other in a perennial moviment.
Secondly, the dynamics of mutual positioning of individuals occur in
dialogical practices – it means, concrete, embodied and real life events – and
it is thus this dynamics that creates forms. Forms are conceived as emerging
wholeness carying gestal qualities -- that means that the sum of elements
does not correspond to the quality of the whole (Koffka, xxxx). These forms
are recognized by the partners as shared by them. They condense the history
of mutual exchanges and comprise a dialogical characteristic pattern.
Nevertheless these earlier dialogical forms are very much anchored in
affective feelings and as such they could be thought as sentience forms
10
(Langer, 1953, p.xxxxx). They are dyadic historical construction carring their
history in the particular dialogues the specific partners’ have developed.
However, at the same time, they are novel, emergent as forms containing
dyad mutual “knowledge” that had grown “in-between” them, someway
abstracted from the specific actions from which they emerged. Therefore,
these forms exhibit a degree of objectivation as forms. Moreover, because
they have this objectivation shared character they give a sense of stability to
the world of partners’ continous dialogues. Because of these characteristics I
propose to conceive them as suspended units of time-space. The
irreversibility of time change is somehow supressed because forms have such
degree of objectivation and stability in the partners’ world. At the same time
they offer a space (a place, a room) for the concrete actualization of old and
new types of exchange of dialogical actions. Thus, these forms are distinct
from the concrete elements – partners’ specific actions – englobed by (in?)
them. Shared as forms they can be applied for different actions in diverse
situations. Finally, these shared forms seems to present the seeds of an
abstracted and objectified reality in the world of partners and, due to that
quality they allow displacements – what means they can be used in diverse
moments of the dialogue, different times, and in diverse contexts or places
(spaces), characterizing the first signs emerging from this dynamic view of
brain and selves.
2.1. From wholeness to relationships and individuals: Positions
Addressing wholeness is a major contribution of Sidtis and Keirman’s (2012)
paper. For these authors wholeness means the inclusion of biological (brain
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functioning), psychological and social dimensions in a situated historicalcultural environment. Wholeness means not only the cognitive-recognizing
character of voices, but also emotions, values and affects all included in the
recognition of the familiar voice in a concrete situated context. This whole
brain comprises cortical and subcortical structures, the functioning of limbic,
midbrain and most subcortical nuclei for recognizing a familiar voice (pp.
xxxx). This whole brain “take in consideration” a self composed by a great
quantity and diversity of aspects referred by Sidtis and Kreiman (2012) as a
“dizzying variety attach(ed) to the familiar voice pattern” (pp. xxxx.) In the
words of these authors, referring to own and other scholars’ work, the self that
is involved in this wholeness conception is described as “The whole self
underlies the personal vocal pattern, such that a large range of subtle,
ephemeral personal characteristics are encoded and conveyed to the listener,
who infers these attributes from voice. This includes the physical self (gender
and age, health, reproductive fitness, race, size, and attractiveness; (see
Kreiman and Sidtis 2012, pp. xxxx, chapter 4), the social self (education,
background), and the speaker’s personhood (personality, mood, emotions,
and attitudes) (Laver 1968; Berry 1990; Revelle and Scherer 2009; Scherer
1986; Konopcznski 2010).” (pp. xxxx). This “dizzying variety” includes habits,
sports, hobbies; face, facial movements; moods, personality, expression;
conversational style; paraphernalia (e.g., glasses); idiosyncratic details;
valence in relationship; walk, gait, movement, seated position, posture; house,
pets, family; “look,” style; personal history; appearance, scent, feel (e.g.
handshake); historical, biographical background; episodes interactions;
sociopolitical relations; physical facts; aura, self (see fig. 1 pp. xxxx). Thus,
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the relatedness character of the whole brain links to a whole self and its
immersion in a whole environment characterizing a familiar voice. This
includes an immense array of relationships connecting the partners involved
in a process of communication, that cannot be separated or distinguished per
se, instead, need to be treated as a high complex and open system. The
fundamental characteristic of this system is the essential mutuality of the
social partners involved in dialogical relations. Moreover, these dialogical
relations occur in a time and in a space situated in our socio-cultural
environment. Thus, the quality of this concrete mutuality is central for
distinguishing the complex system of relationship in which emerges a self as a
dialogical self (in agreement with a dialogical perspective, xxxx). Position
synthetizes the quality of these totalities as far they are involved in mutual
relationships concretely situated in time but also in socio-cultural space
(environment) characteristic of our species. Position is a relational concept
that encompasses the intrinsic self-other basic quality linking brain and
selves. Moreover, positions encompass time as far as this complex system
evolves through a perennial self-others movement (xxxx) and requires space
because it occurs in a concrete and situated environment. More important,
position requires mutuality, a fundamental quality of selves in dialogue (xxxx).
As Sidtis and Kreiman’s paper recognize and Bertau’s highlights, our task
should focus on a self that carry an interdependent nature shared with other
selves, a mutuality of a whole brain and whole selves. This essential mutuality
occurring through time has a transformative character. Thus, the capacity of
the ‘whole brain’ to recognize a familiar voice need to be thinkable as it relates
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the partners in a progressive transformative task. One of the tenets of a
dialogical perspective is that the minimum unit of analysis comprises three
steps, one that starts the dialogue the other that answer to the first person
and the transformation of the first one due to the reply the second partner
(Marková xxxxx; xxxx; Lyra, 1999). This new quality of relationships transform
the partners in such way that the partner that is producing the voice is altered
by the reply of the one that replies to him. In other words, because dialogue
happens in and through time it is the transformative mutual partners activity
that is at the core of a dialogical perspective (Lyra, 2007; 2012; Lyra & Bertau,
2008). This should mean for the self and for the brain if a dialogical approach
is assumed.
If we have to assume a dialogical perspective we also need to take in
consideration the tranformative power of time. Additionally, imersed in this
transformative power of time, positions need to be taked as external but also
internal relational movement conceiving the external other and the internal
dialogues of the self. So, the whole brain and the entire self are in dynamic
movement as far as we assume a dialogical perspective.
How the transformative position’s mutuality are related to the internal
dynamics that also constitute the self? From a development point of view we
can consider the beginning of human life as a treshhold for exploring the
qualitative leap that distinguish and relates our biological and social
dimensions. Thus, we focus on the question of how emerges a dialogical self
that exhits both external – self-others - but also internal - self-others-in-the-
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self dynamics. In other words how emerges a dialogical self that functions in
a semiotic medium?
I suggest to take seriously the notion of forms as
representing a heuristic concept to understand the bridging between biological
and social sides. This means to propose that from the dialogical practices the
partners create something in-between and in-themselves. This created
outcome exihbits a dimention shared by the partners but also it is objectivable
as a dialogical recognizable (external) construction. This construction has an
spacial relational character fulfflied by the notion of positions in the dialogue.
Thus, it carries a positional aspect; the form relates a partner to the other and
vice-versa. Moreover, this construction has a degree of distance from each
specific action per se; it is abstracted from the simple contingent conections of
partners’ action. For instance, if the baby smiles the mother can smile too to
him or if the baby extend his/her arm towards an object, the mother offer the
object to him/her. These are exchange of actions can be read as contigent
actions learned through dyadic history. However, what they show as a form is
a development achievement that is “above” the specific partners’ actions,
somehow detached, but that gives continuity to the dialogue; at the moment
that they use this form they can “predict” that the dialogue will continue
through actions that need not be the same all time and can be innovative
actions, but they will fit the type of dialogue encapsulated by the form
constructed; the objects can change, two objects can be offerred at the same
time or the rhythm of the exchanges can be inovated. What does it means
from a developmental point of view? I am proposing that it has emerged from
dyadic historical dialogues a dialogical form is abstracted from the particular
partners’ actions used in each actualization of their dialogues. They are the
15
result of historical partners’ dialogues but they represent a construction that is
someway stabilized – a dynamic and moving “thing” - existing in the world of
the dyad, the emerging microculture of the dyad. Considering the
microgenetic process of development, we can thing of these forms as
suspended unities of dyadic history because the way to construct them is
peculiar to each dyad but they, as a form, can be repeated over and over
again. So, they have some stability and so repeatability – like the melody of a
music can be recognized even if played by different instruments or in diverse
tonalities. Thus, a dialogical view of human beings requires to deepening our
thoughts toward encompasses the quality of the transformative dynamics that
create human beings as selves that construct these earlier forms, proposed
as the seeds of sign and symbols..
2.2. From positions to forms: suspended time-space carrying history
What forms do these dialogical dynamics make emerge?
The idea that
follows aim to discuss the concept of form as a way of enhancing an
integrative enterprise relating the whole self that produces and recognizes a
familiar voice and the whole brain functioning for comprising this task (Sidtis
and Kreiman, 2012). My focus is at the beginning of life, from the earlier
dialogues. Forms emerge from dialogical dynamics and results from the
transformative position’s mutual movement occurring in and through the
dialogical practices. This particular dynamics makes emerge selves and, at
the same time the seeds of symbolic medium that will progressively construct
an internal dynamics that characterizes a reflexive self (an extended
presentation of this topic is in Lyra, 2007, 2012 and Lyra & Bertau, 2008).
16
Emerging in early ontogeny through dialogical embodied positioning
exchanges, these earlier forms are the very first outcome from the deep
relational nature of partners’ dialogues. Thus, it is through the movement of
you-and-I and vice-versa, occurring in a historical time that the first forms
become shared as a creation of the partners involved in dialogical practices.
Nevertheless they are distinct from the own subjects’ actions because they
are abstracted from them and are objectivable as a thing in movement. I say,
precisaly in movement because they are not entities in the world but they are
recognizable by the partners and they allow the actualization of diversity and
allow to innovation in the partners’ new, emergent world. Moreover, these
earlier dialogical forms can be recognized by the observer that carreful
analyses the historical development of dyadic exchanges (Lyra, 2007; 2012).
Thus, they allow one of the most fundamental characteristics of semiotic
capacity: the capacity to create novel meanings through abstraction,
objectivation and displacement of the forms as far they can freed the subjects
from the immediate context of their creation (Valsiner, 2012). They are thus
used by the partners as reflecting a mutual history that is personal but also
sociocultural, because embedded in a semiotic environment (see Valsiner,
xxxx), making a link between inner and out worlds, creating a secure ground
for the subjects involved in their particular history and allowing communication
development.
The concept of forms, as inner forms, and its role in the development of a
cultural-historical psychology is pointed out by Bertau (2014). Particularly
concerning with the process of interiorization of the cultural-historical semiotic
17
world through language Bertau (2014) elaborates on how the concept of inner
forms migrates from German Humboldtian tradition to Russian Psychology.
The contribution of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) philosophy of
language reflects the changing of paradigmatic thinking due to a
transformation towards romantic ideas – developed in reaction to the Kantian
rationalism and Enlightenment philosophy. Making the consideration that
there is not a distinguished Romantic position specifically on language, Bertau
pointed out that Humboldtian ideas reveal this Zeitgeist conceiving language
as a dynamic and lived phenomenon. The migration of the Humboldtian
philosophy of language to the Russian scholars at the first decades of 20th
century, through the work of Aleksandr Potebnia, has reached Yakubinsky,
Vološinov, Vygotsky, Bakhtin’s ideas on language and dialogue, according
with Bertau, (2014, pp. xxxx). The focus on communication as the arena of
real language activity highlights the core idea of both traditions – Humbodtian
and the Russinan scholar of the beginning of XXth century – considering
language and dialogue and as dynamics, an alive phenomenon, a life
expression and, focusing on concrete context of language production and
exchange through the activity of listening and replying. “Language is regarded
as an auditive event, bound to a sensible perception taking time and
happening in a concrete space, and is not taken only as a structure or as a
product one can fixate and contemplate”. (Bertau, 2014, pp xxxx).
The notion of inner forms is a consequent reasoning of all such dynamic and
alive view on language giving concreteness to the phenomenon of
interiorization, in other words on the question on how an external dynamics,
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subsumed as language activity, gives rise to an internal dynamics conceived
as thought. The importance given by Vygotsky to “the word” as the unit that
links language and thought can be interpreted as representing the quality of
what is created at an internal level - thought as inner form - from the situated
dynamics of exchanges with the social partners, conceived as concrete
dialogues embedded in language activity (Vygotsky, xxxx). Moreover, “the
word” as used in Russan by Vygotsky, means that this inner form also has an
abstracted meaning (Valsiner, xxxx) but still as a form. This meaning for
“word”, as both internal and abstracted, exhibits, it my understanding, the
duality of this form, creating internally a dimention of abstrateness.
What are the relationships between inner forms and emergent dialogical
forms in early ontogeny? From an ontogenetic point of view the creation of
form as comprising one of the first step in human construction of the cultural
world of signs and symbols can be anchored in some of Werner and Kaplan’s
(1984) approach for symbol formation regarding the following aspects. The
first deals with the ‘organismic-holistic orientation” in the sense that the first
constructions of human beings has a gestalt character that in embeded in real
life contexts. This embedness allows for differentiation (and hierarchization) of
constructed wholes that have the characteristic of being new and diverse from
the elements that originally gave rise for that construction. Second, the
purpusiveness or directness of developmental enterprize is taked here
focusing in the power of the imersion of the infant in the perennial self-others
dynamic. Thus, it is through this dynamic view wth otherness that constructed
the cultural semiotic world emerges to the newbourn (and even before). So,
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developmental purpusiveness is dialogical and inserted in the real contexts of
life by and through otherness conceived as always relationally constructing
themselves as selves and symbols (Werner & Kaplan, 1984, pp xxxx).
Besides these two basic prnciples, Werner and Kaplan’s (1984, pp. xxxx)
though explicitaly refers to symbol formation as a form building process inside
their view of dynamic schematization, characterized as “directive, regulative,
form-building process” (Werner & Kaplan, 1984, pp. 17).
The perspective here assumed gives to the creation of forms a relational and
dynamic view anchored in a microgenetic analysis of the earlier dyadic
historical dialogues (Lyra, xxxx). Hence, we view forms as the product that
emerges from dialogue creating selves in dialogue; the result of the perennial
self-others activity. They comprise units of time and space full of history.
Bertau and Gratier (2013) talk about holoforms in time referring to the form
that emerges from mutual infant-adult narration forms. They define holoforms
“…as type of dynamic gestalt, developing over time, comparable to a sensitive
meaningfull movement performed by different actors. (pp. 112). And they add,
these holoforms “…comproses the role of the actors, the structure in time and
the meanings given to each element in respect to the narration enacted. It is
thus a complete form.” (pp. 112). As they say, it is “…a grammar dialogically
performed by the partners.” (pp. 112).
Elaborating and expanding from the idea of holoforms in time emerging at the
beginning of infants dialogues we propose to consider these earlier forms as
suspended of time-space, gestalt unities, carrying their history of construction.
20
These forms have an inner meaning for the partners and, at the same time an
externalized character as far they are patterns of mutual actions shared by
them and possible to be recognized by careful observation. These forms
belong to inside selves dialogue and outside partners’dialogue. Thus, they
have an objectivable character that is abstract from the actualized actions
performed by the partners’ at each moment. Moreover, they have a type or a
kind of stability in the partners’ world what allows them to easely engage in
exchanges framed by these forms and even, and more important, can
innovate within the well know constructed form (Lyra, xxxx). I call them
suspended time-space because, regarding time, it sems that a created form
stops, in some way, the flow of irreversible and changeable time by quasifixing a product built by the partners for the own purpose of continuing the
dialogue; so time is suspended in this sense. Regarding space they carry, as
was referred regarding holoforms (Gratier & Bertau, 2012), the role of the
actors and the particular history constructed by them exhiting, in the structure
in time, the actions used before but the meaning created to them is due to
their presence (partners’ actions) regarding or in respect to the given form.
So, partners’ action due their meaning because they are inserted in the form.
And it is because of this – a secure dyadic constructed ground -- they can
inovate in the dialogue. All these aspects – on time and space – allows a
common understanding that gives a mutual trusting to the partners in
dialogue. I call them suspended time-space because time flow and space –
including partners’ positioning and actions exchanged – are, at the same time
maintained and moving and changing (innovation).
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Returning to discuss the issue of enhacing an integrative view focusing on the
qualitative leap that separates and differentates the bioloical and social sides
of human functionig I suggest that the creation of these earlier forms is a
turning point that we find in early ontogeny. Taking this view I can say that the
whole brain and the whole self produce “something in between” that becomes
objectivable and recognizable as a repeatable form that can be used by the
partners exhibiting and carrying a shared history.
I follow Gratier and Bertau (2013) in that the concept of form can link the
earlier partners dialogical constructions and latter the semiotic and symbolic
language constructions exhibiting external and internal sides of selves
dynamics. For that purpose I come back to the fundamental concepts of
irreversible time and the need to spacialize time as relating the creativity
power of dialogical practices and its characteristic way of constructing forms
as getting support on the ideas of Bergson (2009/????). It is interesting that
Bergson, focusing on the creative power of life, its ‘élan vital’, had developed,
I could say, a quite similar idea regarding the pervasiveness of creativity
inherent in dialogue and the creativity of life that has some parallelism to the
self-organizing notion discussed before in this paper. It is my understand that
the notion of eternal creativity of life can be read as the capacity of human
beings of self-organizing in such way that adapt to the future through new
forms of organization, based on pass but never as repetition of the pass. This
adaptive purposiveness of development we can also find in the ideas of
Baldwin (xxxx). In a similar vein but highlighting the role of human semiotic
dimension, Valsiner (xxxx) assign to our capacity of using signs the way
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human beings have found to face the uncertainty of the future (Valsiner, 2000;
2007). For Bergson, this creativity is due to the necessity to overcome time as
duration. Time as duration is fleeting – always vanishing and continuously
becomes past -- therefore, becoming passed and is transformed in
spacialized time acquiring the character of language, in the present sense,
forms. Thus, language, for Bergson, is the consequence of spacialization of
time for dealing with time as duration. Moreover, semiosis is the emergent
human capacity for that purpose, in other words for dealing with the
irreversibility of time.
The creation of forms and its initiation in the concrete and sensitivity nature of
our experience also gets support on Percean semiotics, particularly
developed by Innis focusing on the dynamics of meaning making (xxxx).
According to Innis (xxxx), new meanings emerge from a totality of coexperience of messages that are composed by diverse qualities of signs, at
least, three types of signs, icons, indexes and symbols. The mismatching or
ambiguity between different qualities of signs is one of the reasons that allows
for a constant dynamics and creativity of them, leading to the emergence of
new forms, “forms of sense’, that defines the ultimate matrix of world
apprehension” (Innis, chapter xxxx, pp. ). In order to give a meaning for a
situation, we start by getting a first impression that progressively is translated
in conceptual meaning and, therefore, in symbolic representation (Innis, xxxxx
pp. xxxx). This first impression is an embodied, not completely consciousness
and high affective feeling that emerges as a first form from which will be
elaborated the symbolic meaning. This privilege of affect and not completely
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consciousness character of the first impression of experience is, thus, pointed
out. This first impression – a primitive experience – is a message composed
by all possibilities that the signs transmit and allows to transmute in symbols
their iconic and indexical potentialities.
Hence, the concept of form aims to integrate the irreversibility of time and the
dimension of space. The qualitative leap that permit to a dialogical self
disposing of an external and internal dynamics is described by Hermans
(2001) through the relational and mutual character of the concept of position.
“A position always implies relations, that is, internal–external relations (e.g. as
a father I’m invited by my children), internal relations (e.g. as a father I
disagree with myself as an ambitious worker) and external relations (e.g. my
children and my friend get on together quite well). Typically, a complex
mixture of all of these relations is at work” (pp. 154).
The importance of conceive of affect - as it is stated by Innis – as the star
point of construction of any semiotic activity supports the view that language
and dialogue, therefore, the familiar voice produced and recognizable by a
dialogical self, grows from an embodied, concrete and situated activity.
Moreover, this situated activity pointed to an environment that is historical
constructed and culturally embedded. Voice is therefore, as Bertau (xxxx)
highlights, a physical, biological and social event that is inserted in dialogical
practices as relating the one that produces with the one that listening in a
constant mutual transformation. The emergent forms comprise the product of
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these exchanges, encompassing voices and all other possible dimensions of
actions in dialogical practices dynamics.
Have emphasized forms as emerging from the dynamic of the dialogical
practices, and, at the same time, it origins inserted in a historical and cultural
environment in which language as dialogical activity plays its constructive
role, one word need to be said regarding already constructed cultural
environment in which these forms emerge in ontogeny. It is not my view to
propose that these forms emerge detached from the cultural and language
environment in which dialogical practices evolve. Exactly the opposite this
environment offers the scaffolding for this development. As it is well described
by Bateson (1975) the similar form of adult conversation with turn-takings but
also overlapping maintains a major resemble and was named by this author
as ‘protocoversation’. In the same line of reasoning Bruner (xxxx) creates the
term scaffolding referring to the way the infant builds their knowledge about
forms of play, including partners’ role in the exchanges during play (the
concept
of
scaffold
for
Bruner
(1957) has
encompassing other developmental acquisitions).
a
broader
application,
Last but not least, the
conventionalization of forms of communication, including the ways they are
inscribed in the objects (Rodriguez & Moro, xxxx; Moro, xxxx) are all
illustrations of the canalization or modeling role of language and cultural
environment. They are all engraved on the mutuality of partners’ dialogue and
build, successively, historical constructed forms of exchanges that are
growing as abstracted and objectivable therefore, allowing the constructive
activity of partners’ dialogue. Particularly they allow displacements what
makes that the world of partners’s exchanges can move on time and places
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(diverse and new contexts of actions). Thus, they are emergent signs in
emergent selves.
3. Conclusion
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