Re: [xmca] Vygotsky vs. Derrida

From: Kellogg (kellogg@snue.ac.kr)
Date: Sun Oct 22 2006 - 01:34:35 PDT


Let me straighten something out first. In my last paragraph, I use the word "intellectual" with two very different meanings.

"First of all, decontextualized thinking allows volition and choice that is not available otherwise; it is possible for an intellectual to go bohemian and be a factory worker or a waitress, but the reverse is simply not realistic in a bourgeois society. Second, being an intellectual is really a lot of fun, even though we adults somehow manage to fail to convey that when we teach teenagers."

This is a mistake. I meant that it is possible for an ACADEMIC to go bohemian and be a factory worker or a waitress but not vice versa in a bourgeois society. Of course it is possible for a factory worker or a waitress to be an intellectual; in some ways it is actually a bit easier!

Tony, I can't get the book that Michael recommends. But I just read Derrida's "Writing and Differance". Derrida thinks that HIS "difference" involves a deferring of meaning, because every "trace" refers to some absence of trace, and every text refers to some other text referring to some other text.

I think this is an expansion of Saussure's idea (which was largely limited to phonology and lexis) but I don't see that it is any different. In both cases we have a closed system. That is what Derrida means when he says "il n'y a pas d'hors-texte". And a closed system is not a dialectical one, much less a materialist dialectical one.
 
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education


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