I read with much interest Deborah's article on Bakhtin. And this was only possible - to read it - because of Nate's intervention sending it attached to one of his XMCA's posts.
(1)
As the author, I also believe that "narratives histories of persons and their concrete forms of answerability are central to a theory of knowledge" and that too much can be lost "if theorists focus their interpretive readings less on concrete histories and narratives and more on generalized descriptions of activity setting and the mediational means that constitute them". But this, do not take over the importance of those "generalized descriptions". It came to my mind the distiction made by Davidov between Activity as an explain principle and Activity as an object of study in his La énsenñanza escolar y el desarrollo psiquico: investigación psicológica teórica y experimental (1988:29). It seems, somethimes, that professor Deborah signs the importance of Activity as an object of study rather than an explain principle.
(2)
I must confess you all that the use of the word individual by the author - to refer to a particular subject - does not make me feel confortable at all along my reading of the article. In my mind individual is to subject as organism is to body (Body, of course, undestood as something cultural and beyond physical characteristics and functioning - Remember, please, ocidental now-a-days body building fever).
(3)
Whe she refers to Wertsch, it seems to me she makes a distiction between Voloshinov and Bakhtin. Am I wrong? I think Bakhtin used the name of Voloshinov to sign Marxism and Phylosophy os Language. Is it true?
(4)
At "Aesthetic Activity" She says - reffering to mother-child interaction:
"(...) words that for the first time determine his personality (...)" (Bold mine)
It looks like that the concept of personality, to the author, is something stable and can not change. A subject's personality changes according to contextual surroundings and situations in my undestanding.
(5)
Despite this reservations Professor Deborah shows a very interesting Bakhtin's reading that calls attention to the importance of considering particular forms of answerability, aside general socio-cultural systems and discourse analysis, relevant to understand more and better human activity.
Ricardo Ottoni Vaz Japiassu
Universidade do Estado da Bahia-Uneb
Cond. Aldeia de Trobogy
Rua B1, Bl. 49C/301
Patamares - Salvador
41680140 BAHIA
Brasil
Fone: (071) 3660923
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Mar 01 2001 - 01:01:19 PST