[Xmca-l] Re: Yasnitsky and Van der Veer: Mythbusters!

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Hello,

In keeping with Peter's image offered by Van der Veer, I thought this image (attached) might be interesting to consider as well and what kind of titanic arguments must have ensued in its translation and interpretations.

It's always been an interesting popcorn-eating event watching team myth-makers vs team myth-busters at work all over the world and throughout the ages, and not just on this list!

I most humbly submit that I sense a necessity for some humor (and maybe some historical distance?):

First there's this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiZt79UKUFQ

And second there's this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri

and this maybe even this:

---- from the Trackers of Oxyrynchus:

He heard Apollo yammering for scraps and tatters
of a lost play of Sophocles: The Tracking Satyrs.
"Grenfell, Hunt!" he heard the voice abjure.
"Prevent Apollo's play becoming mere manure."
Night and day the voice went: "Grenfell, Bernard Pyne,
hunt for my papyrus. This order is divine!"

---- see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trackers_of_Oxyrhynchus

Perhaps, If I might offer,  the lesson really to consider is that while it may appear that history ends with us, it really doesn't. We will one day just be the ghost of what we happened to be fortunate enough to write down on scraps of paper, and in my case it will likely be just a to-do list!

(and what would Monty Python do with THAT I wonder?)

In any case, the take away for me (and I do like popcorn, especially with all the innovative flavors that are coming out in the market these days, such as white-cheddar jalapeño popcorn) is that if one is hoping to write for posterity, and not just for one's peers and publications, or, even, the peanut gallery outside the ivory tower, it seems prudent to consider the audience of the future, whoever that might be; whoever we might conceive them to be. 

They certainly won't be us! We won't be here!

One thing's for sure, any emotion we might have about these matters seems, at rock-bottom, to be an expression of care, rather than cynical hostility, that tends to have an appearance (only an appearance) of removing, with distancing, any previous past hurts and disappointments (which I suppose is also its own expression of care, but in a noodling sort of way).

What I consider most of all when I think about Vygotsky is this: intellectual freedom is hard work, and it's not just the politics, but the material of it. We possess bodies that get sick, we can't read because our glasses are not the right prescription (anymore), we have to do our laundry, take care of our children, and parents and neighbors, tend to the egos of others so that we might eat another day. Sometimes we must suffer to watch witch burnings with little we can do about it. Then after that is dealt with, we attempt to make sense of the tiniest shreds of what has been left behind by those who came before us. That's what I learn from Vygotsky.

It's really something, isn't it?

Still! the spirit must continue to be willing because the alternative is not livable if we want to remain human. And since we are human, then the answer is apparent. 

Don't you think?

Kind regards, and even: a very [merry/happy] new year!

Annalisa
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