Reading Dewey as I revise the Critical Computational Literacies syllabus

Erin has asked me for a revised syllabus on Critical Computational Literacies; in search of a suitable starting point I have been reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on john Dewey. In addition to learning that he was born in 1859 (as our house was under construction!), I am finding in Dewey articulate precursors and guides for several themes which are important to me.

First is his critique of the “reflex arc” model of behavior, essentially that we passively respond to stimuli. He makes the point that perception is never the beginning; it is always qualified and contextualized by broader acts. Recognizing is always recognizing as, with context and priors. Dewey points to meanings and function as qualified, contextualized entities, not absolute or objective truths. This is abslutely congruent with “figured worlds;” I share Dewey’s interest in holistic accounts of meaning. For me, Vygotsky’s and Bakhtin’s theories provide the mechanisms by which we contribute to the production of the figured worlds which then recursively frame meaning.

This is operationalized in “acts” as essential unit of analysis for behavior. “Acts are transactional: we act with and on things, in contexts, amidst conditions. Acts are fundamental to understanding behavior because they are selective. By directing movement and organizing situations, they manifest interest. This combination—of selectivity and interest—make activities meaningful.”

Acts might be useful to me as part of my article on interfaces and as part of my article on trellising.

Where Dewey talks about “habits” and “customs” as acquired accreted modes of action, today we might be more familiar with talk about “practices.”

In “interface” I mean to explore the relationship between private, internal meanings and external forces shaping and defining us.

As with habit, emotion is not the private possession of the subject, but rather emerges from the fluid boundary connecting event and organism; emotion is “called out by objects, physical and personal”, an intentional “response to an objective situation” (EN, LW1: 292).