A sign forms a structural centre which determines the whole

From: Andy Blunden (andy@mira.net)
Date: Sat Jan 06 2001 - 05:30:31 PST


Friends, I have been catching up with my basic Vygotsky reading over the
Christmas break. A great joy, especially as I had not read any of the
material about "anthropology" before and I have learnt a lot of new aspects
of CHAT as a result.

I don't want to be a bore, but I want to again press the issue of money. In
the excellent piece in the Vygotsky Reader "The problem of the cultural
development of the child" I read:

"A sign or an auxiliary means of a cultural method forms a structural and
functional centre, which determines the whole composition of the operation
and the relative importance of each separate [psychological] process." (I
quote the whole passage below).

This is what I am on about. The piece was written in 1928 and it appears
that LSV *was* familiar with the 1844 Manuscripts which were in the
possession of the Soviets since 1923. Surely Vygotsky was aware of Marx's
view of money mediating the relation of person-to-person and its impact of
the human personality (esp. as in Comments on James Mill, not published
till 1932)?

Surely the observation above leads directly to the conception of the
psychology of the human being brought up in the society of generalised
commodity production having at its very centre the money symbol? and surely
an understanding of the psychology of the modern human being rests on this?

And yet when I came to the piece entitled: "The socialist alteration of
man" I find an extremely *weak* analysis (in my view), and one that seems
to have been written out of the Party manual, rather than by a great
thinker like Vygotsky. Thanks to the wonderful exchange with Anna Stetsenko
and others in Nov/Dec, it is possible to understand how such formulations
arose in the USSR, but that hardly need inihibit us now!

The few books out of those that you all recommended to me last year all
dealt with money and its appearance in the life of the child as _just
another social practice among many_, rather than as the central organising
principle of the modern world, and consequently also the central organising
principle of the psychology of its citizens.

I intend to investigate this problem further, and any comments are most
welcome. ... quoted below is the context from which I have lifted the above
quotation.

thanks for your patience,
Andy

__________________________________________________________________
"There [among apes] the problems and their solutions were entirely in the
plane of external activity, as opposed to ours which are in the plane of
internal activity. There an irrelevant object obtained the 'functional
importance" of a weapon, here it acquires the functional importance of a sign.
"Mankind moved along the latter path of development of memory based on
signs. Such an essentially mnemotechnical operation is the specifically
human feature of behaviour. It is impossible among animals.
"Let us now compare the natural and cultural mnemonics of a child. The
relation between the two forms can be graphically expressed by means of a
triangle: in case of natural memorization a direct associative or
conditional reflexive connection is set up between two points, A and B. In
case of mnemotechnical memorization, utilizing some sign, instead of one
associative connection AB, the others are set up AX and BX, which bring us
to the same result, but in a roundabout way. Each of these connections AX
and BX is the same kind of conditional-reflexive process of connection as AB.
"The mnemotechnical memorizing can thus be divided without remainder into
the same conditional reflexes as natural memorizing. The only new features
are the substitution of two connections for one, the construction or
combination of nervous connections, and the direction given to the process
of connection by means of a sign. Thus new features consist not in the
elements but in the structure of the cultural methods of mnemonics.
"The structure
"The second task of scientific investigation is to elucidate the structure
of that method. Although each method of cultural behaviour consists, as it
is shown by the analysis, of natural psychological processes, yet that
method unites them not in a mechanical, but in a structural way. In other
words, all processes forming part of that method form a complicated
functional and structural unity. This unity is effected, first, by the task
which must be solved by the given method, and secondly, by the means by
which that method can be followed.
"The same problem, if solved by different means, will have a different
structure. If a child in the above mentioned situation turns to the aid of
external memorizing means, the whole structure of his processes will be
determined by the character of the means which he has selected. Memorizing
on different systems of signs will be different in its structure. A sign or
an auxiliary means of a cultural method thus forms a structural and
functional centre, which determines the whole composition of the operation
and the relative importance of each separate process.
"The inclusion in any process of a sign remodels the whole structure of
psychological operations, just as the inclusion of a tool remodels the
whole structure of a labour operation. The structures thus formed have
their specific laws. You find in them that some psychological operations
are replaced by others which cause the same results, but by quite different
methods. Thus, for example, in memorizing mnemotechnically, the various
psychological functions, such as comparison, the renewal of old
connections, logical operations, reasoning, etc., all become aids to
memorizing. It is precisely the structure which combines all the separate
processes, which are the component parts of the cultural habit of
behaviour, which transforms this habit into a psychological function, and
which fulfils its task with respect to the behaviour as a whole."

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| - Andy Blunden - Home Page - http://home.mira.net/~andy/index.htm - |
| "It has been said that the very essence of civilisation consists of |
| purposely building monuments so as not to forget". L S Vygotsky 1930 |
~ Spirit, Money & Modernity, Melbourne Uni Summer School 23/24 Feb '01 ~
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+



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