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Re: [xmca] Re: xmca Digest, Vol 45, Issue 47



Thanks

On 18/02/2009, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:
>
> I take a stab at some of these issues in the attached paper. p
>
> Peter Smagorinsky
> The University of Georgia
> 125 Aderhold Hall
> Athens, GA 30602
> smago@uga.edu/phone:706-542-4507
> http://www.coe.uga.edu/lle/faculty/smagorinsky/index.html
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 9:11 PM
> To: mcole@weber.ucsd.edu; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] Re: xmca Digest, Vol 45, Issue 47
>
> Perhaps I could risk throwing in my thoughts Mike, because
> David and I have discussed this in the past too.
>
> My understanding has been that LSV brought forward the
> concept of word meaning as a foundation for solving the
> problem of intelligent speech. I am not sure how wide that
> territory was for Vygotsky; self-evidently I think it is
> wider that simply "intelligent speech", but there are two
> reasons I would not go so far as to say that it was meant as
> a "unit of analysis of human consciousness".
>
> (1) Words are probably the most important of artefacts, but
> they are just one kind of artefact. My work with "teaching
> spaces" when I first started to use Vygotsky was to do with
> how building forms succeeded in transmitting theories of
> learning to future generations, despite books and papers
> claiming the opposite of what was set in concrete.
>
> (2) Apart from artefacts, is also activity. Doubtbless
> activity is implicit in meaning in some way, but it is
> unclear to me. I think it is a mistake to make the
> foundation of consciousness just words, rather than practice.
>
> Andy
>
> Mike Cole wrote:
> > Without the time (or skill to switch to cyrrilic!) I have been thinking
> > about Kolya's questions, ,David.
> >
> > For those who forget in the stream of xcma chatting, Nikolai asks:
> > where Vygotsky posits word meaning as
> > unit of analysis of human consciousness?
> > In which text and on what page? From what Vygotsky's work it is taken?
> Could
> >
> > I ask you to make a quotation from Vygotsky?
> > Thank you in advance
> > Nikolai
> >
> > I was thinking how nice it would be to know how to search the vygotsky
> > corpus online in Russian, which I do not know how to do.
> >
> > And remembering fragments of why I thought David's comments resonated
> > strongly
> > with my own intuitions, formed in part, by LSV.
> >
> > such as (no quotations or page numbers, just failing memory here):
> >
> > meaning is the most stable form of sense-- every totally stable? really?
> > word meaning changes in development
> > the closing of *Speech and Thought *that David points to, the drop of
> water,
> > perhaps,
> > being in my eye.
> > The citation of the fragment from Doestoevsky where a bunch of guys are
> > standing
> > around saying, it seems, the word "product of defecation" (oh poo!) and
> > every one
> > is using the same word and every one is both saying the same thing and
> > saying something different.
> >
> > Don't all of these and many other examples (Paula, are the Sakharov -LSV
> > blocks of any help here?) point to the general conclusion that David was
> > asserting?
> >
> > Might our Russian friends join Nikolai and help us to understand the core
> of
> > the issue
> > David raised? Is he incorrect? Can you search the corpus and help us to
> > understand
> > if we are misleading each other?
> > mike
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 5:26 PM, David Kellogg
> <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:
> >
> >> Dear Professor Veresov:
> >>
> >> Let me begin by saying how much we enjoy your work here in Korea. Our
> group
> >> has been discussing your 2005 "Outlines" article "Marxist and
> non-Marxist
> >> aspects of the cultural historical psychology of L.S. Vygotsky" since we
> >> read it last year, and I found your 2006 article "Leading activity in
> >> developmental psychology" very useful in figuring out why I don't accept
> the
> >> whole construct of "leading activity".
> >>
> >> I think that BOTH works are really quite central to the periodization
> >> problem under discussion, but I also think that BOTH works refer mainly
> and
> >> centrally (and thus for me somewhat misleadingly) to a period of
> Vygotsky's
> >> oeuvre that is quite different from the one I have in mind.
> >>
> >> The 2005 article places a good deal of stress on early Vygotsky, a
> Vygotsky
> >> who is almost non-Vygotskyan, or at least non-psychological, Vygotsky in
> his
> >> early twenties, a student of the humanities with a very strong sense
> that
> >> nothing human is alien to them.
> >>
> >> The 2006 article in contrast seems to me to place a great deal of stress
> on
> >> the post-Vygotsky period, and I was very surprised and pleased to read
> that
> >> the work on "leading activity" is really not as far as I had thought
> from
> >> the fragments LSV left behind in his unfinished "Child Development".
> >>
> >> Elkonin, at any rate, seems to have been fully aware that the "leading
> >> activity" is in no way typical or characteristic of a particular period
> >> (though Leontiev and lately Karpov have said exactly the opposite). The
> >> problem remains that I do not see any place for the crisis in this work,
> and
> >> there is no question but that MY Vygotsky, LATE Vygotsky, the Vygotsky
> of
> >> Thinking and Speech gives the crisis an absolutely central (one might
> even
> >> say a critical) role.
> >>
> >> Of course, when I said that word meaning is a unit of analysis for human
> >> consciousness I am not simply repeating what others have said (e.g.
> Werstch
> >> 1985). On the contrary, I mean what for me is the most mature and
> therefore
> >> in some ways least characteristic moment of Vygotsky's own work; I might
> >> even call it the "leading activity" of his thinking.
> >>
> >> I meant, especially, the very last three paragraphs of Thinking and
> Speech.
> >> I have always found this to be a little like the last page of "Origin of
> >> Species", rather more than a conclusion, but a whole revolutionary
> program,
> >> complete with a clarion call in the very last six words:
> >>
> >> Осмысленное слово есть микрокосм человеческого сознания.
> >>
> >> David Kellogg
> >> Seoul National University of Education.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435
> Skype andy.blunden
> Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
> http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm
>
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