Anna,
I found your account very exciting. I tried to describe very briefly the
collaborative
nature of Vygotsky's work in my book Creative Collaboration. But I did not
have your detailed knowledge of the correspondence, etc. between these
coworkers. I am leaving for Denver tomorrow, and will not be able to return
to this conversation for a few days. But I want to thank you specifically
for including the women collaborators
in your list. I have always found Levina's article on inner speech, for
instance, very helpful.
Gratefully,
Vera
-----Original Message-----
From: Stetsenko, Anna <AStetsenko@gc.cuny.edu>
To: 'xmca@weber.ucsd.edu' <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Monday, November 13, 2000 3:15 PM
Subject: CHAT as collaborative enterprise
>Dear all, just in case you also feel some of the themes need to be
>continued... and coming back to the historical context. I do not have a
>smoking gun that would put things upside down. However, I do believe that
>some misperceptions of Vygotsky and Leont'ev and others from this school of
>thought have to be addressed. The reasons for these misperceptions, in my
>view, cannot be attributed to anybody's deliberate attempts at distorting
>things. Rather, they are largely caused by objective difficulties of
>reconstructing the extremely complex dynamics of how this school emerged
and
>developed in the extremely complex socio-cultural-political context that
>involved at least three revolutions, two world wars and one cold war (and
>several completely different epoques). Most importantly, this very context
>is still now in the midst of a profound transformation for which no history
>has yet been written - as reflected, among other things, in difficulties of
>even naming things that occurred in the last 10-15 years in the 'former
>Soviet Union' (to use one of the many bad expressions... because there
>cannot be a 'former' SU). The transformations that are occurring in Russia
>(and the whole world) right now are certainly not neutral to how we are
able
>to reconstruct the context of Vygotsky's school, because they change the
>very standpoint from which we attempt to evaluate the events of the past
and
>to infer their meanings for the future. Oddly enough, the current
confusion
>with elections in this country also plays into the same context...
>
>
>Some of these misperceptions have been already addressed in the course of
>the present discussion in a wonderful collective effort that gave rise to
>many exciting new points of view which, ultimately, I believe, will help
>achieve a much more contextualized and deeper understanding of not only
>Leont'ev but the whole CHAT perspective. This is a task of enormous
>difficulty and I can only hope of adding a small modest piece to the whole
>puzzle.
>
>Because I cannot and do not want to be too detailed, I 'll just try to
>formulate what appears to me to be the major issue here. Vygotsky's
theory,
>for the most part, has been taken in isolation from the development and
>dynamics of the whole CHAT perspective (great credit has to be given to
>whoever was the first to come up with this extremely pointed abbreviation,
>was it you, Mike?). This is an unfortunate perspective, because V's work
>and research have been right from the start very much a COLLECTIVE,
>COLLABORATIVE ENTERPRISE that included efforts by a whole group of people
>(Luria, Leont'ev, Morozova, Elkonin, Zaporozhets, Galperin, Slavina,
>Bozhovich, Zinchenko, Levina). This group of people (all of whom assigned
>the leading role of a Teacher to Vygotsky) constituted a unique example (to
>my knowledge) of what indeed can be called a 'school of thought' that
shared
>common goals, assumptions and commitments and, generally, pursued an
>outstanding common agenda - that of developing foundations for a new
>psychology as an objective science.
>
>In this sense, the works of Vygotsky and his followers embody the very
>spirit of their approach that puts such a great emphasis on exactly the
>collective and collaborative nature of any activity.
>
>
>The collaborative spirit of V-L-L school is evident from many different
>features of how it started and evolved. Many initial ideas were developed
in
>collective discussions between the members of the group and research was
>carried out to substantiate these collective claims, as in Leont'ev's
>research on memory, Luria's expedition to Central Asia and so forth. More
>importantly, Vygotsky's insights have been developed after his death by
>members of his collective to produce more elaborated accounts of many
>psychological issues (e.g., the relationship between lower and higher
>psychological processes, the role of activity in the development of mind
>etc.). It has been a gross distortion in the literature to ignore the
>development of cultural-historical ideas after V's death by his followers
>not only because they elaborated these ideas but also because they helped -
>in various forms - to propagate these ideas and, specifically the V's
>contribution, to several generations of psychologists in Russia and,
>ultimately, across the world. I don't think V's works would have ever made
>it to the fore of Western psychology if not Mike's and others' efforts in
>the US that were, in their turn, mediated by Luria's and others' efforts
in
>Russia to reinstate their significance.
>
>This collaborative nature of CHAT sheds light, I believe, on several
>peculiarities of this school that are otherwise difficult to grasp and
>explain. For example, it explains why so few works have been written in the
>Soviet Union on Vygotsky's TEXTS per se after his death by his followers:
>precisely because they did not take these texts as remnants of the past
that
>needed to be interpreted, but rather as the working tools for developing
the
>same research agenda further. Hence, often so little care has been taken of
>making 'proper' (proper only from a perspective of a different, more
>historical, genre) references to Vygotsky, and so much confusion has arisen
>even in terms of authorship of some texts (e.g., was it V and Luria who
>wrote the "Tool and Sign"? or just V?). The letters that the members of
this
>group wrote to each other is a great testament to the unique atmosphere in
>which they worked and lived and to the fact that they were clearly aware of
>the collaborative nature of their efforts. Just one illustration: Luria's
>daughter quotes from V's letter to Luria, on the occasion of Luria's
>reporting on his expedition to Fergana, in Asia (my sloppy translation): "
>Dear A.R., I am writing literally in such an excitement that is rare to be
>experienced in one's life. I cannot remember of a day with more joy and
>light. This is literally a key to so many problems in psychology... That
>this study is of primary significance is out of any doubt, and OUR NEW PATH
>IS NOW ASSERTED (BY YOU) not merely theoretically, but also practically and
>experimentally" (dated July 11, 1931; see E. Luria, My father A. R. Luria,
>1994, Moscow: Gnosis, p. 65; emphasis added by AS).
>
>In addition, what united V-L-L and the others from the same school, I
>believe, was the common horizon that they all had (and Paul H. Dillon
stated
>this in a very concise and adequate form). We cannot read their minds but
we
>can read their memoirs and autobiographies, memoirs of their children and
>colleagues as well as archival materials, correspondence etc. (more and
more
>of this is being published as we speak, in Russia, thanks to efforts of
>several YOUNG psychologists - Sokolova, Umrikhin, D. Leontjev and others
who
>do not seem to think, by the way, that the CHAT representatives somehow had
>discredited themselves).
>
>From all we know, I do not think that anyone of the V-L-L immediate school
>could be described as a dissident... They were obviously quite engaged in
>political life, and held positions of high societal responsibility and
>esteem, both L's were members of the CP (I believe). It is clear that they
>- as almost the majority of intelligencia of that times - were opposed to
>Stalin's repressions. But do not forget that these purges and repressions
>were condemned in a very clear way by Khrushev in early 1960ies, that Gulag
>was abolished, that millions of prisoners were set free or rehabilitated
>posthumously at exactly the same time. When I wrote that they perceived the
>society they lived in as classless etc., I referred to 1960 and 1980-ies,
>not to the times when V lived. I would not be surprised at all that V, L
and
>L had many critical views about the Soviet regime on the whole too, but
this
>would not change the argument that they did have a certain very specific
>horizon that guided a lot of their research...To judge their position of
not
>being directly in opposition to the Soviet regime - this is exactly a kind
>of question that depends on where one stands in the here-and-now context. I
>can only say for myself that my own standpoint has undergone such rapid
>changes in the last 10 years (and continues to do so) that I would hesitate
>to make judgments at this point in time.
>
>I believe that the collaborative nature of V-L-L school of thought defies
>many traditional ways of how to look at and how to reconstruct their
>'texts'; a different, new methodology should be applied in this case.
>
>Anna Stetsenko
>PS. Carl, does this answer any of your comments at all?
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Nate Schmolze [mailto:schmolze1@home.com]
>Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2000 7:41 PM
>To: Xmca
>Subject: XCMA: Call for Papers
>
>
>Hi all,
>
>I have two (I think) potential papers from members offered for discussion,
>so thought it would be a good time for a general call.
>
>Like what we did last year this would be papers from XCMA members which
>relate to the themes of mind, culture, and activity.
>
>Depending how it all goes I imagine we could possibly begin a collective
>reading in December. This should give enough time to finish up Leont'ev.
>
>Nate
>
>
> who-is-at @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
>
>Nate Schmolze
>http://members.home.net/schmolze1/
>schmolze1@home.com
>
> who-is-at @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
>
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