[Xmca-l] Re: Just Published: L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Vol. 1

Sat Jan 4 13:57:58 PST 2020

DEAR Wagner!

No offense taken, of course! You and I are old CHAT chums, and a bit of
rumpus is part of the skinship. (The name is "David", by the
way..."Kellogg" is a well known breakfast cereal manufacturer whose
biological relationship to me is far too distant to do me any good....)

Actually, I think I probably share all of your concerns, including the
price of commuting to ISCAR, climate change, and your worries over the
death of Brazilian academia. I wouldn't exactly describe Korean academia as
"dead", but our Vygotsky group is more or less dead to them, and we mostly
distribute our work through the teachers' union. In fact, one reason why I
wanted to publish Vygotsky in English is that the professoriat here will
insist on reading him in English, even though our Korean translations are
now done from Russian.

Copyright is one barrier, and it's real. In response to Anne-Nelly's query
(because I know Andy is under some stress these days), you might want to
look at this:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140424/17582827024/radical-publisher-claims-copyright-free-collection-marx-engels-works-orders-them-taken-down.shtml

But there are other barriers that are equally serious or even more so:
translations are sometimes more wall than bridge. So for example on p. 50
of Vol 5 in the English Collected Works, we learn  that Vygotsky's data
comes from Pashkovskaya, and that Pashkovsakya's data comes, in part, from
the SCY, the schools for "Christian" youth, supposedly "ShKM" in Russian.
But the Russian word for Christian doesn't begin with "K" or "C"--it begins
with "X". Even the Russian Collected Works gets this right: PEASANT schools
are meant. The English, on p. 57, says this: "From our point of view,
logical thinking is not composed of concepts so much as of separate
elements". The Russian says exactly the opposite.

Yes, you are right--the review system has also become a wall and not a
bridge. But I think some of this is our own doing, you know. The other day
I got a review that said, basically, I don't understand this paper at all,
but I think it should be published and the readership should be given a
chance to sort out what this guy is really trying to say. Even the first
part of that review--the admission that the reviewer is over his or her
head--is rare enough, let alone the admirable humility of the second part.
More readership--less leadership!

I think the longest, widest, worst wall of all--but the one most
immediately in our power to get over--is still just drive-by citation:
citing Vygotsky without actually reading him. I remember having my work
rejected by "Vygotskyans" at the Canadian Modern Language Review who
informed me that Vygotsky had clearly written that there could never be any
such thing as a "group" or "collective" ZPD. Reviewers still complain when
I point out that a ZPD is always measured in years, but these years are not
calendar years, that Vygotsky was intimately associated with sex education
(gay marriage was more or less legal in the USSR until 1931), that LSV
could and did write about the Russian famine, and that he also wrote
extensively on the effect of class consciousness on the adolescent. All of
this can be found in the pedological works, and most of it in the
selections already published in the Collected Works, even if it is well
disguised by the editors and translators.

Of course,  MCA is doing more than its share ito overcome all these
barriers! And yes, a beautiful special issue on the pedology is on the way
in the new year. Francophone readers who cannot wait, though, should read
the remarkable translation and editorial material of  Irina
Leopoldoff-Martin and Bernard Scheuwly which will be its basis:

https://www.amazon.com/science-d%C3%A9veloppement-lenfant-p%C3%A9dologiques-Exploration/dp/303433348X

And Springer has allowed us to make available selected passages
in Engish free online in connection with the upcoming special issue!

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New article with Fang Li:
"How do novels hang together? Characterization as registerial
meta-stability"
Text & Talk

https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/text.ahead-of-print/text-2019-2051/text-2019-2051.xml

On Sun, Jan 5, 2020 at 4:39 AM PERRET-CLERMONT Anne-Nelly <
Anne-Nelly.Perret-Clermont@unine.ch> wrote:

> Hi Michael,
> Thank you very much for these most interesting comments and for this
> information.
> I can see the risk of balkanisation... I would like to hope that it will
> be overcome in some way.
> Yes, all these publications, including pedology , are precious steps ahead.
> I am looking forward to the special issue prepared with the French. Nice
> event.
> Best greetings,
> Anne-Nelly
>
>
> Le 4 janv. 2020 à 20:02, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> a écrit :
>
> 
> Hi Ann Nelly et al  --
>
> We have never been hassled on lchc-related sites, including xmca. We have
> declared several times
> and in several places that xmca is an EDUCATIONAL discussion group and
> that papers/chapters posted
> there are for educational use. Either that has protected us or it is the
> extreme esoteric and trivial nature of the chat-ing
> that has spared us.
>
> I am not sure why Pedology would be subject to difficulties.  The USSR did
> not join the copyright agreement until
> 1973 .. a fact that made possible, financially, the publications of the
> 1920's and later, critical, decades of Soviet
> cultural-historical work.
>
> Note how much is allowed on Research Gate and Academia.
> And note that there is an excellent e-book of many books, including
> Cultural Psych book, floating around the internet.
> I got mine free!
>
> Still very porous, but the fractionation of the internet will probably
> re-balkanize communication and bring it under
> the kind of direct local control exercised by the Chinese, now the
> Russian, and several other country.
>
> Its a big deal to me that The Pedology has been published. It makes sense
> of the way that Vygotsky's students
> distributed various parts of it around many publications in journals and
> book chapters. And hence influenced the way
> that these works were appropriated abroad. In the fullness of time there
> will be a special issue of MCA devoted to French colleagues have
> interpreted this important work.
>
> Back to the future again again!
> mike
>
> mike
>
> On Sat, Jan 4, 2020 at 8:00 AM PERRET-CLERMONT Anne-Nelly <
> Anne-Nelly.Perret-Clermont@unine.ch> wrote:
>
>> Dear David, Dear Andy,
>> Andy's publications in open access are so useful. Without disclosing
>> private details nor entering into the specifics of precise cases, could you
>> help by making us aware of the unforeseen risks of making stuff free on
>> the internet ? ( I ask the question because I read below: "Somebody is
>> going to sue you eventually (apply to Andy for details on this)").
>> Thanks
>> Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont
>> University of Neuchâtel
>>
>>
>> Le 3 janv. 2020 à 23:12, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> a écrit :
>>
>> 
>> Wagner--
>>
>> Nikolai and I did make all the material which we
>> ourselves wrote available for free. All you have to do is click the free
>> previews and the front and endmatter,and you'll get a free pdf. The free
>> previews will tell you, in summary form, what the actual lecture says, and
>> you can decide whether it's worth the money to be able to cite chapter and
>> verse.
>>
>> But I can think of a lot of good reasons for publishing with Springer.
>>
>> a) Springer have been around a while--they were founded when Marx was
>> just getting started in journalism and Vygotsky cites a lot of their
>> Gestalist books--hopefully they will last longer than, say, the Soviet
>> publishing house Vygotsky used did. (The Russian university press that
>> published the first version of the lectures back in 2001 is now bankrupt
>> and has disappeared without a trace!)
>> b) Springer are very much part of the academic market here in East Asia
>> (they aren't in Singapore for the cheap labour!)
>> c) Springer have an aggressive line in e-books, which are the main mode
>> for literacy on my commute to work these days. (Even in illiterate England,
>> Paul McCartney says he can ride the London tube now because everybody is
>> too busy looking up his picture on Google images to notice the original
>> sitting next to them).
>> d) Yelena Kravtsova is on the editorial board of the cultural-historical
>> research series, (She has some claim to the rights to Vygotsky's work,
>> according to the lawyers.)
>> e) Springer stocks libraries.
>>
>> I can also think of three good reasons for not making stuff free on the
>> internet.
>>
>> a) Somebody is going to sue you eventually (apply to Andy for details on
>> this).
>> b) It's too confusing for readers to sort out the chaff from the grain
>> these days.
>> c) It's gonna happen anyway.
>>
>> Actually, the main reason we chose Springer was the same reason that one
>> chooses a wife, husband, or more temporary partner even though they too
>> might just be hungry.
>>
>> Everybody out there was taking no risks and saying no. Springer
>> was willing to take a chance and say yes.
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Sangmyung University
>>
>> New article with Fang Li:
>> "How do novels hang together? Characterization as registerial
>> meta-stability"
>> Text & Talk
>>
>>
>> https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/text.ahead-of-print/text-2019-2051/text-2019-2051.xml
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 3, 2020 at 9:04 PM Wagner Luiz Schmit <
>> wagner.schmit@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> We have this in Portuguese, and cheap. Very very interesting material
>>> presenting another unit of analysis.
>>>
>>> Seriously, why we as Marxists insists on publishing with money hunger
>>> corporations, for-profit publishers and so on?
>>>
>>> Wagner
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jan 3, 2020 at 8:11 AM David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> This is a pretty slim volume, and it's expensive. But if you click on
>>>> the free preview and the chapter summaries, you can get a pretty good idea
>>>> of what you (or your library) will be paying for.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I'm afraid that even the ebook is expensive:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-981-15-0528-7
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> But this is free!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/bfm%3A978-981-15-0528-7%2F1.pdf
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> and so is this:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/bbm%3A978-981-15-0528-7%2F1.pdf
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> David Kellogg
>>>> Sangmyung University
>>>>
>>>> New article with Fang Li:
>>>> "How do novels hang together? Characterization as registerial
>>>> meta-stability"
>>>> Text & Talk
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/text.ahead-of-print/text-2019-2051/text-2019-2051.xml
>>>>
>>>>
>
> --
>  fiction is but a form of symbolic action, a mere game of “as if”,
> therein lies its true   function and its potential for effecting change -
> R. Ellison
> ---------------------------------------------------
> For archival resources relevant to the research of myself and other
> members of LCHC, visit
> lchc.ucsd.edu.  For a narrative history of the research of LCHC, visit
> lchcautobio.ucsd.edu.
>
>
>
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