5003 ghmead
From Studyplace
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Sketch what a statement would look like the meaning of which might not be dependent on the response of another person.
I sent this link [1] to Professor Varenne with the question "Where is the I? Where is the me?" as a kind of joke. He suggested I post this on Study Place and try to answer some of the questions, or at least flesh them out for further discussion.
After talking with a few classmates it became clear that none of us has a very clear understanding of what I and me signified. When it came time to use Mead's ideas to interpret David's behavior (or rather, the social interaction between David and his father, as well perhaps the audience-in-the-camera) we needed new words to make sense of things. One passage in particular seems loaded yet murky: "He can throw the ball to some other member because of the demand made upon him from other members of the team. That is the self that immediately exists for him in his consciousness. He has their attitudes, knows what they want and what the consequences of any act of his will be, and he has assumed responsibility for the situation. Now, it is the presence of those organized sets of attitudes that constitutes that "me" to which he as an "I" is responding. but what that response will be he does not know and nobody else knows. Perhaps he will make a brilliant play or an error. The response to that situation as it appears in his immediate experience is uncertain, and it is that which constitutes the "I."
As we discussed this passage we kept coming back to the same ideas. First of all, Mead seems to believe that interaction happens when person A provides a stimulus (gesture) to person B in order that person B's response will necessarily elicit another response from person A. You thus have to think at least 2 steps ahead of the moment when guiding your action in social situations. Our talk kept coming back to a scenario where person A fixes in his mind some notion of who he wants to be in the future, and with this he attempts to get there by eliciting the help of person B in the form of a response that will in turn elicit a response from himself somehow in-line with that first notion of his future self. That seems hardly clearer - but it looks like A - stimulus to B - response to A - response to B (as new self). Troubling this is the fact that B is eliciting the help of A for the same ends. Thus the response A can get from B in the first exchange isn't perfect, it comes with it's own agenda. So the me is who person A wants person B to be so that the response he gives to the initial stimulus will be most advantageous to person A responding as his ideal future self - the I then becomes the part of oneself that is thinking 2 moves ahead and attempting to exert some control over the interaction to get where it wants to go. This may be totally off, but it is interesting that we continued to come back to questions about control. We used words like control, conscious of, deciding to, directing, etc. In fact, to those who participated in this conversation it seemed very important that we account for the element of control over one's actions. These words, and the sense of control over one's actions, is conspicuously absent from Mead's writings. He says that nobody knows what the response to the response will be. On p. 176 he goes on to say that "I want to call attention particularly to the fact that this response of the "I" is something that is more or less uncertain [...] The "I" as a response to this situation, in contrast to the "me" which is involved in the attitudes which he takes, is uncertain." Why the uncertainty? Why is this discussion wholly devoid of any discourse about agency, self-direction, willpower? What our conversation made most obvious was that there is a myth (delusion?) of control that is somehow very important to us as we try to make sense of social interaction. And Mead seems to be struggling to explain this interaction without this myth. Now, if we turn back to David, we see a series of funny exchanges between him and his father:
David: I feel funny. Dad: Kinda felt good, didn't it? David: Is this real life? Dad: Yep this is real life (laughing). David: Ok now...ok now I...I have two fingers. Dad: Good! David: I have four fingers. [tries to touch his mouth] Dad: Nah, ah ah ah, don't put that, don't put it in your...mouth. Okay? David: [slowly moves hand away from mouth as eyes widen] Dad: You feel good? David: I can't see anything. Dad: Yes you can. David: [yelling]
It's clear they are in interaction - David's behavior wouldn't look anything like this without the presence of Dad. But there is a certain amount of disconnect between the response of the one and the response of the other. Being drugged up seems to have thrown a wrench into the machine of father and son interaction. With this in mind, how are we to take David's yelling? He lifts himself up on taught, straight arms, his face becomes animated and hard, and his long, drawn out yell is directed off to one side. Is this a response to feelings of frustration? Is this a reaction to not feeling in control. It is very difficult to see how David is able to get a response from his Dad which gets himself to respond in any logical manner. It seems disconnected. Maybe the yelling is simply what happens when you lose the illusion of control over your future self - when the story you can tell of what just happened seems to have no continuity or structure in which you played an active role in shaping.
Next, we get David engaging in existential ponderings, accompanied by dramatic hand gestures. Seems fitting for someone bewildered by losing control over his future. For our discussion this raises the question of where the I and the me are for David. At some level he seems aware of what is expected of him (although this at times is questionable, as when he is told not to put his finger in his mouth and he responds with a look of shock). There is a social tension between him and his dad, evident in the fact that a "normal" turn pattern is maintained - I think this indicates the presence of a me for David. But it doesn't seem to be a me to which he can have an attitude of his own - hence...where is the I?
The name viral video does not do justice to the (cultural) fact until an artifact like this appears in two social environments that are so different. A colleague, who is not a native English speaker, showed me this video last week and to now find it being analyzed within the context of Mead's theory of interaction gives me a sensation that, as Fiske might claim, cultural artifacts create local and personal messages are used and changed, mixed and remixed, and exploited to address and communicate with people as groups as different foriegn colleagues, a university profesor, or a G.H. Mead. Indeed, one could analyze this medium (a hilarious video of the conversation between a kid and his father) as the "gesture" used in our conversation. What did you (and I) want, expect, and internalize about this joke and as we knew what the response would be, which is why we used it, what future symbolic constructrion does this imply was created within ourselves the moment we created the gesture?
The logic that Mead takes in his construction of the "1" and the "Me" is maddening and fascinating. The previous conversation, the theory of conversation of gestures holds water and is clearly visible held up against daily interaction. For example, an analysis of a social faux paus such as a "bad joke", one see Mead's conclusion that A's gesture pre-empts B's response by incorporating B's response in the register of the A's initiation. When one tells a "bad joke", he or she is often the only one laughing when it is over, until that person's consciousness actually realizes that the joke was not funny and no one is laughing, at which point the joke teller imitates these unexpected responses. It is most easy to see how the conversation of gesture through communication works at the points at which it doesn't work, as it is most easy to see how the initiation-response system of a classroom works to create periods of lessons, when those lessons break down.
Why does David scream? As you say, the conversation functions within the norms of initiation-response, it functions, in fact, very fluidly. David has self-identified as deviant (temporarily), he realizes things are not normal. The scream must be the manifestation of this deviancy, in other words, the present "me" of past actions initiated by "I" which have found identification through responses, i.e., identification as drugged, freedom from punishment, special treatment as "funny", whatever he may be thinking at the moment. Clearly the scream fabricates a response that is expected, from the father. Of course David's expecations are quite off key, but I agree that the expectations of a response indicates an identification of "me". I am wondering if anyone can look at Howard Dean's famous scream with Mead's microscope?
Is it possible for 'I' to have a name?
Is unacknowledged knowledge knowledge?
Is unacknowledged ignorance ignorance?
Is unacknowledged disability disability?
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