Re: Leontiev's Cultural Psych.

From: Paul H.Dillon (illonph@pacbell.net)
Date: Mon Nov 06 2000 - 19:38:40 PST


Anna,

I found your comments about L's social context utterly refreshing. One is
so used to reading descriptions of how V, L, and others struggled to do
their work under the totalitarian system (oh what they might have produced
otherwise! what rubbish), and so little addressed to the fact that they
were in fact developing their psychologies to address the struggles of
implementing a truly classless society, one in which the wealth of the
society would be employed to benefit all and not just a few, one in which
each individuals ability could be realized to the greatest extent possible
and in which each individuals needs were so recognized and met. Whether or
not this actually happened in the Soviet Union between 1917 and the 1980s
is totally irrelevant. It is enough that the people who worked there (L, V,
Ilyenkov, Mikhailov, Luria, others) had this as the horizon toward which
their own activity was directed. I personally believe, and have stated many
times on xmca, that the discoveries of V, L, and the other psychologists who
worked during the period of socialism in Russia resulted from the fact that
they were addressing that horizon.

Now that is behind us. The socialist experiment in Russia was crushed under
both internal and--primarily, overwhelmingly-- external pressures. So what
can we do with a psychology that looked forward in every sense of the word
and presumed that the society itself--at some level--supported the
transformation of the very historical character of humanity? What can we do
with this psychology in a society that in every sense of the word increases
class antagonisms at every level, leveraging the poverty of nations against
each other instead of using the wealth of nations to develop the world as a
whole for the people as a whole?

Carl, can psychology substitute for politics? What can these psychologies
tell us that might enable us to change the society we live in (the one that
is perhaps going to elect an embodiment the worst qualities of the
capitalist individual as its president)? Do they enable us to understand
how anyone might think that owning a gun is more important than global
warming? Wouldn't we need an entirely different theory? An entirely new
defectology? Would the psychology adequate to the personality in a
socialist society be the same as the psychology adequate to the personality
in a capitalist society? I think the very principles on which CHAT is
founded indicate that this cannot be the case. But perhaps something was
learned by those whose psychological research looked in that direction that
might enable us to retrieve that direction again. To my mind, that is what
is worth looking for in the V and L and AT traditions. I sincerely hope
that whatever is true about these theories be such that it "stick in the
gullet" of the process of co-optation and denaturing that characterizes the
culture of mature global capitalism. The failure of all post-modernism to
be a true cultural critique is evident in every TV and magazine commercial
we now see--all the little liberation movements focused on ethnicity and
gender and other little particularisms with their little subordinate
contradictions converted to the process of merchandising and
commodification--no possibility of any transgression that transgresses here,
just enjoy your ride in the belly of whale, that po-mo knife can never cut
through its walls.) Or even better that this psychology lead some to
realize that the promise of this psychology cannot be realized in a society
dedicated to the preservation of class society. And psychology will gain a
more political awareness--no not a silly little parlor game cuteness about
language--there will be no coffee breaks, etc. An awareness that
psychology itself is a force creating personality not just describing it,
theorizing it.

OK that's my rant. Ana, I hope you don't mind that I took your comments as
a point of departure but I really did appreciate your reminder of the "other
social context" of these theories.

Paul H. Dillon
8:00 p.m. 11-06-2000



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