[Xmca-l] Re: Fate, Luck and Chance

[Andy Blunden]

When I learnt "Marxist Psychology" in the 1970s, many years before a 
friend kindly gave me a photocopy of "Thought and Language" (as it was 
called) in about 1997, it went something like this: human beings 
objectify their powers, e.g., the hand is objectified in the stone axe, 
etc., and then these human powers are perceived as objectively existing 
things, reflected in the mind as concepts, etc., etc., and on this basis 
one builds a kind of anthropology of labour. When I read Thinking and 
Speech, obviously my mind was thrown into turmoil. Here was a *far* more 
productive approach to understanding psychology.

So I gather that when Vygotsky is making a big deal of the distinction 
between word and action and between sign and tool (and other mediating 
elements) he is doing so under conditions where the dominant view was 
that signs are a subordinate *type* of tool, a derivative of tool.

As you have no doubt observed with your keen eye, David, I have lately 
become much more sensitive to relation between tool and sign and the 
inherent dangers which flow from using a category like "artefact" in 
which the two are lumped together. But as you know, in this connection 
Vygotsky also said: "With full justification, Hegel used the concept of 
mediation in its most general meaning, seeing in it the most 
characteristic property of the mind."

You also know that I come to Vygotsky from Hegel and Marx and that my 
specific interest is in an interdisciplinary theory of activity, not 
psychology or linguistics. So for my specific interest, so long as I 
understand the relation of word-use to action in the nuanced sense in 
which Vygotsky it in that section "Word and Action", that is, the 
complex genetic relation between the development of means of acting on 
matter and means of acting on mind, as opposed to the simple and 
erroneous typology which may be implied in the category of "artefact" or 
in the anthropology of labour, I can work across a wide, 
interdisciplinary field using Vygotsky's ideas. The interconnection of 
politics and social class (for example) necessarily entails all kinds of 
artefact mediation.

Now David, you doubtless have a view on why it was wrong to entitle 
Vygotsky's book "Thought and Language." As I see it words (i.e., 
uttering stuff when you speak) as what people *do*, that is, are 
actions, and Thinking and Speech needs to be read in that sense, as 
opposed to considerations of the contents of a dictionary. (Like 
everything else, I am making a distinction not a dichotomy here). And 
also, it is important as I see it to understand that words (those little 
packets of sound) are material objects and in that specific sense a part 
of the whole material culture of a people. All I am saying is that while 
the distinction between word and action, and between sign and tool, is 
every bit as important as the distinction between action and activity or 
any other such distinction, the relation between them is also fruitful. 
But the unit of analysis Vygotsky uses in "Thinking and Speech" is not 
artefact mediation, it is word-meaning. That has never been at issue.

Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


David Kellogg wrote:
> ... I am always surprised that he is ready to mash
> together tools and signs as "artifacts", since this is a purely
> genetic category and has nothing to do with either function or
> structure. It is true that all explanations are in the final analysis
> genetic and not functional or structural. But that is only the final
> analysis: in the end the thing that a genetic analysis has to explain
> is precisely function and the thing that function has to explain is
> precisely structure.
>
>   
>