literature and psychology

From: Mike Cole (mcole@weber.ucsd.edu)
Date: Sat Aug 02 2003 - 13:05:18 PDT


I apologize for failing to respond to the question about literature
and psychology. I do so now only because the other tasks facing me
are difficult, so I can play at working instead.

If you have not done so, it is worth dipping into Vygotsky's *Psychology
of Art* which is not in the collected works. The first chapter is
fascinating, among other things, for Vygotsky's adoption of ideas from
Plekhanov, an important Marxist thinker in the early USSR, which adopted
a base/superstructure distinction and located psychology vis a vis
ideology on the sociopolitical regime (underpinned by economic system)
on the other. And the examples are all from literature, which is the
subject of the treatise.

But mostly we are talking about (at least I was talking about) the
insights from literature which can be found in a lot of LSV's writting.

We could start with Mandelshtam, a poet: I forgot the word I wanted to
say, and thought, unembodied, returned to the hall of shadows. This
epigram for the chapter on Thought and Word in "Thinking and Speech" (1987)
is full for literary examples as sources of illustration and discovery
of principles that LSV then seeks to confirm in different ways. There is
the famous scene from War and Peace where the two-to-be lovers, levin and
kitty, speak in the initial letters of the words to declare their love,
the group of drunks using a single word to mean many different things.
(from Dostoevski). Somewhere LSV uses Pierre trying to decide whether or
not to go to Borodino to fight Napolean as an example of a decision
making artifact: using dice to decide the outcome.

One of the great things about teaching in a communication department is
that all of human culture is allowable as legitimate sources of insight
into important principles. Montage in music and film, narrative of course,
poetry (I will try to post a couple of poem's which have had a profound
influence on my thinking about language, thought, and development).

There are, of course, many different ways in which to use literature, art,
film, etc as a working cultural historical activity theorist. Yrjo
uses a Finnish folk tale and Huck Finn to talk about Zones of Proximal
Development and a
Peter Houg novel to talk about development. Puzerei in Russia actually
used Dostoevsky as a major source of data for elaborating on the concept
of perezhivanie, one of those words we worry a lot about on xmca (literally
experiencing, but probably more closely approximated by the idea of having
a very intense experience).

My own practice has been to use literature as a source of ideas and to seek
(or stumble over!) the insight they provide into very different domains,
such as the organization of kids' activity using computers.

Phew. Now time to turn back to work and pretend its play, instead of the
other way round!
mike



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Sep 01 2003 - 01:00:06 PDT