[Xmca-l] Re: Prehistory of Written Language????

[David Kellogg]

Dear Francine:

It's really the history of written SPEECH, isn't it? Kind of oxymoronic in
English, but still a better way of setting out the problem of a prehistory
than 'written language'.

I had never heard that Vygotsky published it in 1928-1929. My copy of
Vygotsky 1935 had a fottonote saying it was a chapter in "History of the
Cultural Development of the Normal and Non-normal Child". But it also says
this is an unpublished manuscript from 1928-1929.

There is some controversy about the last ten chapters of HDHMF which
includes the Prehistory of Written Speech as Chapter Seven. You know that
the revisionists claim this is a different book, and the editors of the CW
just pasted them together. That's why the first publication in 1960
announced that the last ten chapters--including the Prehistory--were never
written or had been lost. I suppose they would say that "History of the
Cultural Development of the Normal and Non-normal Child" is the book that
the editors of the CW cannibalized to eke out the missing ten chapters,

The problem with this claim is that there's a pretty clear reference to a
whole book in the opening chapter (1997: 3) and also in the final chapter
(where the chapter on written speech is explicitly mentioned), and they do
seem to be talking about the same book. I don't think that the concluding
reference (1997: 241-243) could be referring to a different book because it
talks about reversing the order of the chapters (theoretical background
emerging from the empirical studies rather than empirical studies framed by
theoretical backgrounds as it actually appears). It seems to me that
Vygotsky did what Marx did when he wrote Grundrisse--study first,
theoretical background second. Then he reversed them, as Marx did when he
wrote Capital.


David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
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On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 6:11 AM Larry Smolucha <lsmolucha@hotmail.com> wrote:

> >From Francine:
>
> To Michael Cole,  et. al
>
> Hoping that you might help me clarify the publication history of
> Vygotsky's manuscript "The Prehistory of Written Language."
>
> Did it originate in 1928/1929 as a lecture or unpublished paper or
> publication?
>
> Was it published as a chapter in *The History of the Development of
> Higher Mental Functions* in 1931?
>
> Then was it published again in 1935 in *The Mental Development of
> Children During Education.*
>
> It was included as the last chapter in *Mind in Society* in 1978.
>
> Perhaps David Kellogg knows something about its history.
>
> Need to know for a publication - I have been asked to contribute the
> chapter on Vygotsky, as a Pioneer in Psychology.  (I will be going down
> to my basement archives to look at xeroxes of the Russian texts.)
>
> Hope everyone stays in good health, we have been fortunate so far.
>
>
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