1) Having an Experience vs.
Below you will find two lists that I have compiled that serve to define the characteristics of these two categories. They are as follows:
The Governing Qualities of Experiencing:- Experiencing is a lesser form of having an experience: "Things are experienced but not in such a way that they are composed into an experience" (36).
- Cessation: Here, what one does, thinks, observes, etc. positions themselves at odds with one another. In other words, there is some form of cessation that occurs that limits experiencing from becoming an experience.
The Governing Qualities of Having an Experience:
- Completion and Fulfillment: "...we have an experience when the material experienced runs its course to fulfillment. Then and then only is it integrated within and demarcated in the general stream of experience from other experiences" (36-37).
- Consummation: "It's close is a consummation and not a cessation. Such an experience is a whole and carries with it its own individualizing quality and self-sufficiency. It is an experience" (37).
- Continuity and Phases: "In an experience, flow is from something to something. As one part leads into another and as one part carries on what went before, each gains distinctness in itself. The enduring whole is diversified by successive phases that are emphases of its varied colors" (38).
- A Steady Movement Forward: "Because of continuous merging, there are no holes, mechanical junctions, and dead centers when we have an experience. There are pauses, places of rest, but they punctuate and define the quality of movement. They sum up what has been undergone and prevent its dissipation and idle evaporation. Continued acceleration is breathless and prevents parts from gaining distinction" (38).
- Unity and Distinction: "Different acts, episodes...[and] occurrences melt and fuse into unity, and yet do not disappear and lose their own character..." (38).
- A Destination within View: "...every integral experience moves toward a close, an ending, since it ceases only when the energies active in it have done their proper work" (42).
- Emotional Commitment and Reconstruction: There is "an element of undergoing, of suffering...in every experience. Otherwise there would be no taking in of what preceded. For 'taking in' in any vital experience is something more than placing something on the top of consciousness over what was previously known. It involves reconstruction which may be painful" (42).
- Unity of Life's Resources: "In experience...emotion is the moving and cementing force...giving qualitative unity to materials externally disparate and dissimilar. It thus provides unity in and through the varied parts of an experience" (44).
One of the key points that I pulled from the characteristics of having an experience is that it requires a level of organization that includes a destination, a steady movement towards that destination, a fulfilled of the course taken to the destination, a well-articulated plan for getting to the destination, and the ability to see how this journey extends beyond the destination. That's seems to be a lot of planning for an experience. In my own perspective, I have considered experiences to be events that are somewhat haphazard, or perhaps more spontaneous than what Dewey describes. Experiences tend to be instances that I could not have calculated in advance. Yet, Dewey is saying that to some extent they are planned and organized. Something here isn't jiving for me. Maybe this is precisely what Dewey is trying to say. Maybe I'm think of having an experience as experiencing. If that is the case, having an experience within museums as opposed to simply experiencing requires a lot of effort from our visitors and a lot of planning from us as educators.
Lots of ideas going on here! I'll start with your own dissonance about Dewey's conception of experience. As you note, he does intend them to be planned and organized, and from this standpoint it is about intentionality and consciousness. I agree that your perspective matches more closely with what Dewey called "experiencing" rather than "an experience". What might make sense is in considering the range of formality and intentionality as another aspect of the governing factors. Simple everyday things may not constitute an experience, but the moment I go to the grocery store and have a heightened moment of recognition or consciousness of the vegetables--seeing their colors, their shapes and designs very differently than before--I've shifted into an experience. I didn't plan it, and it could be haphazard, but the moment I realize what is happening, the intentionality of my view point shifts. Similarly, in formal situations, we can create conditions and activities that may be directly intended to elicit this type of response. But you could also imagine a moment of informality--going fishing with your grandmother--where the same things are happening.
ReplyDeleteSo, in a museum situation, part of our work is to facilitate the conditions that are setting up an experience, knowing of course that it may not be possible to elicit in all people.