[Xmca-l] Re: Happy New Year and Perezhivanie!

[Andy Blunden]

Antti, firstly on "functionalism." There is an issue about 
conceiving of the mind as an aggregate of various 
psychological functions, as opposed to an integrated 
"system" in which every psychological function (e.g. 
perceiving, acting, cognising, reading, ...) entails a 
particular configuration of the entire system, and related 
issues. In this sense Vygotsky could be said to be a 
structuralist and definitely not a functionalist. Except of 
course, that as a Marxist he took the mind as the subjective 
aspect of a subject-object which includes social relations 
as its objective aspect. That is never what I have in mind 
when I talk about functionalism and structuralism however. 
By "functionalism" I am always referring to the sociological 
theory of Talcott Parsons and the tendency among Soviet 
Marxists to integrate this functionalist view into Marxist 
dogma. E.g., "the role of the petit bourgeoisie is to ..." 
By "structuralism" I mean the current of social theory 
growing out of Saussure's linguistics, Levy-Strauss's 
anthropology and Althusser's anti-Humanist Marxism. One 
must, of course, appreciate the insights which these 
currents of thinking bring to us, but when you get to the 
theories of social stasis of American Functionalism and the 
anti-Humanism of Louis Althusser, I confess it generates a 
visceral negative reaction from me. Like Anthony Giddens, I 
see functionalism and structuralism, together, as a bundle 
of theories of the world which pretends that there are 
"social forces" which act independently of the 
consciousness, intentions and understanding of the human 
actors through which they are active. Functionalism and 
structuralism are together one side of a polarity, the other 
of which is "hermeneutics" which lays all the emphasis on 
the interpretation of the world by individuals, whether by 
means of Freudian ideas, linguistic theories, literary 
criticism or "social psychology." Like Giddens I look for a 
third way, but unlike Giddens I look to a serious theory of 
cultural psychology, not a do-it-yourself psychology based 
on my own personal intuitions.

I haven't followed the views of Alex Kozulin, Antti, so I 
will simply abstain on that question, but the Fedor Vasilyuk 
of today is emphatically not a Marxist. He emphasises the 
power of prayer, which is something quite foreign to the 
Marxist tradition. In 1984, when he wrote "The Psychology of 
Perezhivanie," however, his views reflected to an extent the 
view of Leontyev and his following, so in that sense and to 
that degree, he was a Marxist. But he did not interpret 
Marxism dogmatically in the way Vygotsky criticised in his 
day, and he was critical of Leontyev. BY turning to the 
tradition of Russian Orthodox Christianity, it does seem 
that Vasilyuk turned away from Marxism. Whether that is some 
kind of "humanism" I don't know. "Humanism" is a very 
polysemous word.

Andy

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Andy Blunden
On 19/01/2017 7:53 AM, Antti Rajala wrote:
> ....
>
> I wonder if there is some confusion regarding the notion of functionalism.
> Andy seems to refer to functionalism in social theory whereas David refers
> to functionalistic psychological theory. Maybe they do not speak of the
> same functionalism. Kozulin, suggested by Andy, seems to draw upon yet
> another tradition, Russian humanism, in which life is seen as literature or
> art. Perhaps, the preference for the notion of drama by Alfredo and
> Nikolai, has some resonance with this tradition.
>
> Andy, Kozulin depicts Vasilyuk's humanism in sharp contrast with Marxism.
> Do you agree?
>
>