[Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: English version of Cultural Model

[Dr. Paul C. Mocombe]

I agree greg with your assessment of newness in Vygotsky's model.  I am tackling this in an article and forthcoming book titled, "the vodou ethic and the spirit of communism."

In the work, I argue against the traditional understanding put forth by CLR JAMES that the leaders of the revolution were all "black jacobbins."  I disagree, and argue that the newness of the haitian revolution stems from not the universal history of the west, but from the african metaphysical system of vodou and the subsistence agriculture  and komes (what the haitian sociologist jean Casimir calls the counter-plantation system) it refied and recursively organized and reproduced.

In writing this paper, I began to question the origins of new discourse or alternative structuring structures within Vygotsky as well as chomsky.  In my view, the haitians who adopted the discourse of their former colonial slavemasters became a francophile neocolonial oligarchy, who discriminated against, as their white counterparts did, the african masses who embodied what I am calling the vodou ethic and the spirit of communism.  It took the American occupation by racist southern whites for the haitian elite to recognize their own prejudices and racism towards the masses!


Sent on a Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note® II

<div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> </div><div>Date:07/08/2015  11:47 AM  (GMT-05:00) </div><div>To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu> </div><div>Cc: "Madhere, Serge" <smadhere@howard.edu> </div><div>Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Fwd: English version of Cultural Model </div><div>
</div>​A colleague was just telling me of Michel-Rolph Trouillot's book on the
Haitian Revolution, *Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of
History*. One of the things that he mentioned was that Trouillot points to
the general non-recognizability of what happened in Haiti - here was the
first black republic and the first central American nation to declare
independence from colonialism and yet almost no one had written about it.
In the historical consciousness (of North Americans), it was as if it never
happened - an "unthinkable history". At the time of its happening, it was
truly unthinkable - notions of liberty among a Black populace was an
impossible thing for white Europeans to imagine.

And yet, it happened.

In connection with questions about "the end in the beginning" and the
(seeming?) necessity of the expert-novice relationship, I wonder if this
might be a blind spot for Vygotsky-ian theorizing vis a vis creativity,
innovation, and the "new"?

With respect to Haiti, it seems like something new is coming into being. So
then, how do we imagine this new-ness of being? The default Vygotsky-ian
approach seems to be that the new development comes from the
already-fully-formed. In the case of Haiti, this could lead down the
unfortunate path of seeing the Haitian situation (the new) as being
dependent upon the European colonizers (the fully-formed). This seems to
me, in a sense, to return us to the view that there was "nothing new" in
the Haitian revolution.

This is a potential blind spot that I was pointing to with Packer's piece
as well as in the case of Nicaraguan sign language. Can we imagine the
"new" coming from within a community (of novices!) rather than from without?

I'd welcome corrections here to my thinking about Vygotsky, CHAT, and/or
Haiti. Please.

-greg

​

On Sat, Jul 4, 2015 at 8:05 AM, Dr. Paul C. Mocombe <pmocombe@mocombeian.com
> wrote:

> Dr. Madhere  has provided the English version of the kreyol charts I sent
> in a previous email.  I am waiting for the paper.
>
>
> Sent on a Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note® II
>
> <div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: "Madhere, Serge"
> <smadhere@Howard.edu> </div><div>Date:07/04/2015  9:36 AM  (GMT-05:00)
> </div><div>To: pmocombe@mocombeian.com </div><div>Subject: English
> version of Cultural Model </div><div>
> </div>Mr Mocombe,
>
>
> As you requested, please find attached the English version of the slides
> from my model on culture and education.
>
>
> Serge Madhere PhD
>
>
>


-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson