[Xmca-l] Re: does this screed have an inkling of merit?

[Anthony Barra]

David, thank you.  Extremely interesting response, including some of the
statements I can't quite follow yet, outsider that I am (e.g., "Cities,
churches, college campuses and airline companies are simply the forms which
human biology have taken, and so they are inevitably the conduits through
which viruses reorganize human biology for their own apparently purposeless
purposes."  -- Simply?  e.g., "Viral anarchy of the labor market").  I
don't have the background knowledge to fully understand these metaphors,
but I think they're intriguing.

And yes, we Americans tend not to be keen on excessive central planning.

This was an interesting read, David.  Thanks again.  Even more so, I really
enjoyed your Commentary here, re: 'Vygotsky's originality' (which I
recommend to anyone yet to read it):
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10749039.2020.1711775?journalCode=hmca20


Anthony



On Mon, Feb 24, 2020 at 6:06 PM David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:

> We are living through a public health emergency here in South Korea. I
> won't provide the details, which are (fortunately) even more widely
> available than the virus itself and (unfortunately) far more available than
> the F94 disposible masks we are supposed to be wearing whenever we go out.
> Going out is strongly discouraged, and schools, gyms, and even local
> government facilities remain closed.  But I think that public health
> emergencies are actually a more useful "lens" (as people in our field like
> to say these days) through which to read your article than the the author's
> admittedly irrelevant trip to the beach.
>
> First of all, a good public health emergency like this one, or the Broad
> Street Pump cholera epidemic, the AIDS/HIV epidemic in the 1980s, and
> SARS/MERS in the early years of the present millenium) exposes in a very
> graphic way how inescapable the cultural-historical organization
> of human biological content is. Cities, churches, college campuses and
> airline companies are simply the forms which human biology have taken, and
> so they are inevitably the conduits through which viruses reorganize human
> biology for their own apparently purposeless purposes. Unlike viruses,
> markets, and imaginary libertarian/anarchist paradises populated by
> atomistically inclined "free-thinking individuals" opposed in principle to
> planned behaviors of any kind, these cultural-historical forms have the
> great advantage of being potentially conscious, deliberate, and
> purposeful--i.e. plannable.
>
> Secondly, and as a direct result, a good public health emergency like this
> one also evokes a cultural-historical immune response. Broad Street evoked
> modern immunology. AIDS/HIV evoked ACT-UP, and this had the indirect result
> of showiing how inextricably gay people are part of our cities, churches,
> college campuses and even airline industry and thus helping bring out equal
> marriage rights. SARS/MERS created the medical infrastructure that is
> starting to bring the epidemic under control even in Daegu. This morning
> the leader of the pro-dictatorship pro-American party had to be tested for
> the virus, because he sat next to the virus-positive leader of a
> corporatist teachers "union" in a rally; he tested negative, but not before
> a session of the national assembly had to be cancelled, and then he
> immediately called a halt to all rallies and asked people to cooperate with
> the medical establishment instead of travelling all over the country
> agitating for travel bans on Chinese people.
>
> When I was recently in the USA, I noticed (partly under the influence of
> having to buy short-term medical coverage for myself and my wife) that even
> Americans are starting to take seriously the idea that health care should
> not be completely marketized, that more than just  preventive medicine
> might be usefully nationalized, collectivized, and even planned. The
> "Common Core" and the National Curriculum which motivates the article you
> sent around are both similarly American (i.e. similarly tentative and
> timid) steps in the realization that education might usefully follow suit.
> I also noticed, however, that very few Americans (including the most "left"
> of the current candidates for president) would be willing to see
> plannability extended to other necessities, such as housing,
> transportation, and basic necessaries of life, let alone the underlying
> factors of capital and labor. Education does many things, and inevitably
> some of the things it does can be made to look manipulative and dangerous
> by free-thinking and free-wheeling proponents of the free market like your
> author and our own pro-dictatorship pro-American party. But education
> remains the only cultural-historical immune response to the viral anarchy
> of the labor market that young people really have.
>
> David Kellogg
>
> New co-translation, with Nikolai Veresov:
>
> ‘L. S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works: Volume 1. Foundations of Pedology’.
>
> Free downloadable PDF with introductory essay, concluding essay.
> Free summarizing outlines.
>
> Book product page: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270
>
> The eBook is available here:  https://link.springer.com/
> book/10.1007%2F978-981-15-0528-7
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 4:25 AM Anthony Barra <anthonymbarra@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> To me, it seems a product of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias,
>> but I ask sincerely: does anybody find any inklings of merit in this 2014
>> essay?
>> http://invisibleserfscollar.com/unveiling-the-true-focus-of-the-common-core-obuchenie-within-students-to-gain-desired-future-behaviors/
>>
>> I stumbled upon the article while googling "obuchenie and perezhivanie,"
>> two terms I'm in the early stages of understanding. The blog's proprietor
>> writes with a lot of . . . energy. (And perhaps, a cocktail of hubris and
>> pseudoconcepts - http://tiny.cc/dpbgkz )
>>
>> To briefly add, for whatever it's worth: I am probably more familiar with
>> the (somewhat paranoid) style of argumentation in the attached essay than I
>> am with the finer points of cultural-historical theory.  But I'm not a very
>> refined consumer of either.
>>
>> The blogger writes in a style I'm not particularly fond of -- i.e.,
>> wielding a sword and swinging it around wildly.  Amidst the wild swinging,
>> I ask: does any of it hit?
>>
>> I'd be interesting in any productive thoughts at all.
>>
>> Thanks ~
>> Anthony
>>
>
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