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Cartesian Change, Chiasmic Change: The Power of Living Expression
... 480). Shotter's (2003Shotter's ( , 2009 ideas on change may highlight some drawbacks inherent in such causality models. He points to the way in which change may be approached from two opposite points of departure: either we take "what is invariant as … primary subject matter", which makes change problematic, or we take "activity and flux as primary", which makes stability problematic (Shotter, in Jaworski & Coupland, 1999, p. 22). ...
... We can see that the metaphors we use could have their attachments to various 'models of the world'. An illustration of this can be found in Shotter's (2003) quote from Heidegger: 'A world picture, when understood essentially, does not mean a picture of the world but the world conceived and grasped as a picture' (p. 27). ...
... Change is understood by identifying demarcated, static entities in this picture and through (metaphorical) theories of causal connection. Shotter (2003) emphasises the need to alter our metaphors for change within human existence, as humans are living, expressive bodies who experience and move through interaction rather than demarcated elements in a picture. In his philosophy, Change is an Ongoing Ethical Event ª 2013 Australian Association of Family Therapy Shotter (2003, based on the works of Bakhtin among others, is in search of metaphors that place us within the dynamics of a joint world. ...
... It is thus the aim of the present article to extend current practice-oriented organization studies by focusing on the body as the locus of innovative action and improvisation. We do so by buttressing Heideggerian-inspired organization studies with Merleau-Ponty's (1962) views on the body and Wittgenstein's (1953) and Shotter's (2000Shotter's ( , 2003aShotter's ( , 2003bShotter's ( , 2005 approach to the role of language in practice. As an illustration of this argument, we make use of case study material focusing on practices related to elderly care service provision. ...
... According to Shotter (2003aShotter ( , 2003bShotter ( , 2005, relationally responsive understandings between people require a specific kind of knowing, which he calls 'knowing from within', an understanding that differs from the more conventional forms 'knowing that' and 'knowing how'. As its designation suggests, 'knowing from within' is a kind of understanding that can only be acquired through one's expressive-responsive performance and participation in a given practice. ...
... Referring to Schatzki (1996) and Shotter (2003aShotter ( , 2003bShotter ( , 2005, practices involve not only doings but also sayings. The care workers use language as part of their embodied interaction with the seniors in order to respond expressively and competently to their requests. ...
The Heideggerian strand of organization studies has highlighted important aspects of organizational practices. Because of the emphasis of the practice-oriented approach on routine practice, researchers have taken a special interest in how innovative, improvised action arises. One of the dominant views is that innovative action is the outcome of different variations in everyday practices. Insightful though these studies are, they do not recognize the role of the body in their conceptualization. This article seeks to redress this imbalance by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s (1962) phenomenology, suggesting that the body, as a carrier of practices, is the locus of innovative action. The article proposes that innovative action emerges in our bodily expressive-responsive skilful coping mode. In illustrating this argument, we make use of case study material focusing on practices involving elderly care service provision. We show how the care workers under consideration cope with the demands of their unpredictable work by adapting their bodily expressive-responsive abilities innovatively to emerging situational calls. Practice innovation emerges as the outcome of a tension between what it makes sense for the care workers to do based on the practical intelligibility underlying their own practices, on the one hand, and bureaucratic rules and requirements inscribed in terms of economic rationality and cost-efficiency, on the other. Because bureaucratic rules are perceived as alienating and unethical, innovation would inevitably be a form of resistance. The article specifies this form of practical resistance, concluding with some implications of this approach for organization studies.
... We can see that the metaphors we use could have their attachments to various 'models of the world'. An illustration of this can be found in Shotter's (2003) quote from Heidegger: 'A world picture, when understood essentially, does not mean a picture of the world but the world conceived and grasped as a picture' (p. 27). ...
... Change is understood by identifying demarcated, static entities in this picture and through (metaphorical) theories of causal connection. Shotter (2003) emphasises the need to alter our metaphors for change within human existence, as humans are living, expressive bodies who experience and move through interaction rather than demarcated elements in a picture. In his philosophy, Change is an Ongoing Ethical Event ª 2013 Australian Association of Family Therapy Shotter (2003Shotter ( , 2010Shotter ( , 2012, based on the works of Bakhtin among others, is in search of metaphors that place us within the dynamics of a joint world. ...
... Shotter (2003) emphasises the need to alter our metaphors for change within human existence, as humans are living, expressive bodies who experience and move through interaction rather than demarcated elements in a picture. In his philosophy, Change is an Ongoing Ethical Event ª 2013 Australian Association of Family Therapy Shotter (2003Shotter ( , 2010Shotter ( , 2012, based on the works of Bakhtin among others, is in search of metaphors that place us within the dynamics of a joint world. Shotter (2003) writes metaphorically in his search for an understanding of change outside a causality model based on the picture metaphor vis a vis the world and says that our becoming is our 'walking into a landscape ' (p. ...
In this article, we use the intersubjective ethics of Bakhtin and Levinas and a case illustration to explore change in therapy as an ethical phenomenon. We follow Lakoff and Johnson in their emphasis on the way our conceptions of change seem permeated by metaphors. Bakhtin and Levinas both suggest through a language in which metaphors play a crucial role, that human existence—the consciousness and the subject—emerge within the dialogue of the encounter. They both describe the dynamics of human existence as ethical in their origin. Following this, we argue that change may be seen as an ongoing ethical event and that the dynamics of change are found in the ways we constantly become in this event. We investigate the ethical dynamics of this ongoing event through three themes illuminating the contributions of both Bakhtin and Levinas: (1) we become as responsible, (2) we become in speaking, (3) we become in answering the unknown. We explore these themes through a case illustration. Finally, we briefly point out some possible implications for mental health practice.
... However, it is crucial to point out that over the course of his writing Shotter has opposed the way social constructionism seemed bound up in an epistemic domain, in language seen as a re-presentation of reality. By epistemic domain he means, to put it rather simply, that reality is socially constructed in the sense that the way to think about or picture the world is socially constructed through communication (Shotter, 2003(Shotter, , 2010. Shotter (2010) says that such an epistemic social constructionism is "nowhere near radical enough" (p. ...
... Shotter (2010) says that such an epistemic social constructionism is "nowhere near radical enough" (p. 20; see also Shotter, 2003). He goes on to argue for an ontological social constructionism (Shotter, 2009(Shotter, , 2010) that has to do with the "living expressive-responsiveness of our moving bodies"-rather than "languaged re-presentational realities"-and where "forms of life" (not pictures of the world) emerge within the encounters of bodies (Shotter, 2010, p. 21). ...
In this article, I explore the idea that there is a fundamental ethical aspect that precedes social constructionism. I suggest that within social constructionism we can identify a development from seeing knowledge as socially constructed ( epistemological social constructionism) to seeing not only knowledge, but also corporeal ways of being as socially constructed ( ontological social constructionism). As a next step, I propose incorporating what I refer to as ethical realism in social constructionist perspectives. In the encounter with the other human being, I argue that there is a real ethical impulse that precedes social constructionism and puts it in motion. This impulse is real in the sense that it is neither constructed within, nor is it dependent upon, any particular social–cultural–historical context. In this paper I consider the ethical aspects of human encounters that allow for a constructionist epistemology and ontology to emerge in the first place. I make use of ideas from Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Rancière and consider how these thinkers are used in the work of Gert Biesta. The ideas are discussed in relation to findings from a previous study by the author and his colleagues exploring the experiences of adolescents taking part in mental health services.
... And as our conversation develops we are both having these anticipations as to where the conversation is going, and these anticipations are becoming intertwined. Shotter (2003) calls this intertwining chiasmic, and like the optic chiasma which gives vision depth, it is this that gives the conversation a life of its own and depth. Our dialogue is being 'shaped' by our reactions to each other; we are co-authoring the conversation. ...
Wittgenstein showed us non-dualist mental processes that have relevance for psychotherapy and our ecology. His methodology is therapeutic in that it helps us realise that our attunement with nature and each other is natural and immediate. This thinking helps us redefine mental health, and with the aid of feedback tools enhance our attunement to clients and their attunement to the world. The values of counselling psychology, with its focus on conversational meaning-making, are highly consistent with the demands of this process. © This material is
... In both respects, the topic is timely in view of the recent turn to the body and its affects. Within critical social psychology, issues of affect and embodiment are often presented as a corrective to social constructionism (e.g., Bayer & Shotter, 1998;Clough, 2008;Cromby, 2004;Jones, 2002;Nightingale & Cromby, 2002;Shotter, 2003;Venn, 2009) as well as narrative psychology (Hevern, 2008). Generally in the human sciences, this trend could be viewed as a new discourse that extrapolates variously from neuroscience, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis towards a post-discursive understanding of subjectivity in sociocultural contexts (e.g., Papoulias & Callard, 2010). ...
Rhetorical and literary deconstruction of psychologists’ texts is an established line of postmodern critique, but the aesthetic-affective register of reader—text interactions has received little attention. The issue overlaps inquiries about embodied aspects of subjectivity. Drawing partly on Bakhtin’s dialogism, this study explores two themes concerning the interplay between textual and readerly dynamics through a close-up on two texts containing case studies of children. The textual dynamics of the ‘‘Anna’’ study presented by Jung in 1909, and republished with Supplementary material in 1946 (Jung, 1946/1991), illustrates dialogical tensions arising from ambivalence about whether the epistemic mode is ‘‘paradigmatic’’ (logico-scientific) or ‘‘narrative.’’ An analysis of the Bulger murder, as offered by Nightingale and Cromby in a 2002 article, exemplifies the rhetorical function of the ‘‘child’’ image through its emotional impact on the reader, notably a dissonance between a notion of childhood innocence and the case of children who commit murder. The conclusion reflects on theorizing about embodied subjectivity as applicable to the two target texts.
... For, it seems, something very special happens when living bodies interact with their surroundings that we have not yet (explicitly) taken a proper account of at all in our current forms of thought or institutional practices. The resulting relations have a chiasmic, intertwined, or entangled structure (Merleau-Ponty, 1968; Shotter, 2003). It is the bodily nature of the relevant processes and what occurs in the meetings between them that have not, I think, been sufficiently emphasized. ...
Central to the paper below, is an emphasis on the spontaneously responsive nature of our living bodies, and on the special intertwined, dialogic, or chiasmic nature of events that can occur only in our meetings with others and otherness around us. As participants in such meetings, immedi-ately responsive 'withness-understandings' become available to us that are quite different to the 'aboutness-understandings' we arrive at as disengaged, intellectual spectators. I argue that Goethe's "delicate empiricism", far from being an arcane form of understanding, is a deliberately extended version of this kind of withness-understanding – an anticipatory form of practical understanding that gives us a direct sense of how, in Wittgenstein's (1953) terms, to 'go on' with the others and othernesses around us in our daily lives. There is a delicate empiricism which makes itself utterly identical with the object, thereby becoming true theory... The ultimate goal would be to grasp that everything in the realm of fact is already theory... Let us not seek for something beyond the phenomena – they themselves are the theory. –Goethe (1988, p.307, quoted in Brady, 1998, p.98). Man knows himself only to the extent that he knows the world; he becomes aware of himself only within the world, and aware of the world only within himself. Every new object, well contemplated, opens up a new organ of perception in us. –Goethe (SS, p.39, quoted in Cottrell, 1998, p.257).
The article provides insight into a research process in the Family therapy unit at Department of Child and Adolescent Mental Health at Soerlandet Hospital in Norway. The focus has been on the three days intensive family therapeutic treatment which is part of normal practice in our unit. The objective has been to facilitate a critical look at ourselves and our family therapeutic practice. The article describes the research process and therapists` reflections on what characterizes the therapeutic meetings. Challenges between the language of family therapy and the language of the hospital system is discussed and seen in relation to family therapists` ideology and values.
Key words: Research
process, family therapy, clearness, vagueness, context
Based on phenomenology
, this chapter shows the significance of the body and an embodied spirituality
for organizations situated in in a ‘World of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity’ (VUCA). Following an integrative
re-membering in relation to the nexus of ‘self-other-things’ and an enfleshed integral being in organization Merleau-Ponty
’s concept of Flesh is presented as elemental carnality and formative medium. Furthermore, this contribution discusses implications of an enfleshed spirituality in relation to an inter-practice and inter-be(com)ing in ‘organic-izations
’.
Introduction Much is rotten in the 'sciences' of language and cognition. To those familiar with Wittgenstein's work this is apparent in, for example, the gulf that separates investigations of mind from those of language. Equally, it appears in how empirical work tends to skate over conceptual issues while theories of discourse proceed with disregard for causal processes. Taking another direction, I invoke 'natural history' in asking new questions about the origins of minded and discursive behaviour. In this context, I use 'micro-investigations' to demonstrate how a single interaction can be used to throw light on human development. Rather than argue for the proposed ascriptions, my aim is to show the power of the method by exploring a moment when 'understanding dawns'. Specifically, I scrutinize an event involving a 9 month old baby. Micro-investigation serves to trace why the baby comes to feel like fetching a block. Having shown how neural capacities use bodily connexions with his mother's body, I defend two claims. First, the baby develops by virtue of bio-behavioural events that index social norms. Specifically, these prompt his proto-thinking and, as a result, he has an experience of authoring his fetching. 1 Second, the method shows that Wittgenstein's conceptual clarifications can be used for the real-time investigation of human biomechanics. By considering how reactive-responsive bodies use culturally-based expectations, we can generate empirical hypotheses. While concerning 'mental' events, these invoke –not inner minds –but bodily connexions. In cases like the one described, the challenge is to clarify how the neural control of behaviour links events to customs which are historically aligned with the 'word' fetch.
