Thanks for providing a link back to the Leontiev/functionalism
discussion, Andy.
The links appear to go right through your home hegelian territory and
link us up
to current discussions of "recognition." They also link up with ideas
linked to
Zygmund Bauman's "Liquid Modernity." And to the many other people whose
work
I know too little of.
With respect to functionalism, casting national aspersions aside :-))
, it never occurred to me during my years getting trained to be a learning
theorist in the
Skinnerian tradition, to consider the question of "where does the
function come from" or "who is exerting power here?" We starved the rats
and they ran or died. Or coerced sophomores using grades as "part of their
education."
Then I went to Moscow. Where the caste of characters under discussion
were my hosts. Like I said. I am a slow learner on all these complicated
matters. At the rate I am going I am never going to figure it all out!
:-)
mike
On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 9:05 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
<mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
In my view, Mike, there were some basic questions asked and
answered by A N Leontyev in launching the enquiry we know as
"Activity Theory" are uneliminable, that is, he took a step which
has to be valued and continued. But it was a step at an extremely
fundamental level. It absolutely left open Stalinist-functionalist
directions and well as emancipatory directions. Personally, I
think the impact of the "planned economy" and the "leadership"
which understood "the laws of history" and the state which
represented a "higher stage of society" and so on, left a mark on
the whole current. But its basics, its fundamentals remain intact.
It only remains to agree on what those were.
By-the-by, the home of "functionalism" is the USA.
By-the-by again, in the early 80s I was a member of a Trotskyist
party which put Ilyenkov on a pedastal, and published new
translations of his work in English, which also came very close to
endorsing Lamarkism. It debated it, but the Party perished before
the debate was resolved.
Andy
mike cole wrote:
I am being very slow here. How does this discussion resolve
or help me to
think more clearly about the issues in the subject line? the
issues over
different interpretations of Leontiev, their relation to
functionalism,
stalinism, fascism, etc?
mike
On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 3:34 PM, Greg Thompson
<greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
<mailto:greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>>wrote:
Larry,
IMHO, you're hitting the heart of the matter with
recognition and
agency - self-assertion vs. self-emptying seems a nice way
to think
about the central problematic (and I agree with your
preference for
the latter). If you are interested in developing a more more
self-emptying Kyoto-like notion of recognition, I've got a
couple of
suggestions (and I'm sure I've made these suggestions in a
different
context before, so apologies for redundancy).
First, I'd strongly encourage a read of Robert Williams'
Ethics of
Recognition. In Williams' read of Hegel, you find an
articulation of
recognition that is much more like the Kyoto understanding of
recognition and which is against the crass version you get
from the
existentialists where recognition always about a fight or
struggle for
recognition. As evidence of the cultural tendency toward
self-assertion, it is very telling that one small
paragraph in Hegel's
oeuvre would get picked up as the thing that most people
for most of
the 20th century would equate with Hegel's notion of
"recognition."
But that approach is shortsighted and Williams really
nails this
point. (although I am persuaded by Willaims'
interpretation, I don't
have any skin in the game of whether or not this is a more
or less
"authentic" interpretation of Hegel - I just happen to
believe that
the position Williams articulates is far more productive
than the
struggle-for-recognition model that has been on offer from the
existentialists).
Second, to provide some further support for this claim,
I'd also
suggest checking out Johann Georg Hamann, who is said to
have been a
significant influence on Hegel (but don't read Isaiah
Berlin's stuff
on Hamann, he misses the point). Hamann didn't really
publish much. He
was most noted for his letters to his friend, Immanuel
Kant and in
which he repeatedly tells Kant that he's got it all wrong
(and does it
in a style that makes the point through medium as well as,
if not more
than, message - a point which itself speaks to one of his
central
points about the importance of poetics). In these letters,
Hamann has
a wonderful sense of the intractability of human life, and the
fundamental wrong-headedness of the desire for sovereign
agency. I'd
be happy to share more if there is any interest.
Oh, and I forgot there is a third author of interest in
this regard,
Patchen Markell's Bound by Recognition gives a compelling
portrait of
what he calls "the impropriety of action" - the sense in
which our
actions are not our property alone. Markell's book argues
that tragedy
(and its twin, comedy) derives from this very human
problem. Also
great stuff.
All three of these readings I suggest as a way of pointing
out that
within Western traditions there is a trope that is closer to
self-emptying than self-asserting. Unfortunately it
doesn't articulate
as well with Enlightenment perspectives because it is
often, as with
Hamann, articulated through Christianity. This presents
something of a
marketing problem since the Enlightenment put Christianity
as a thing
of the past and as the kind of believing that small minded
people do
(the kind that tote guns and don't believe in evolution),
and thus a
not very appealing thing for most Westerner's "natural" (i.e.
"cultural") inclination to self-assertion. So I think that
as a matter
of packaging, Buddhism, with its stripped down religious
ideology,
probably has more appeal to most post-Enlightenment
Western thinkers.
And I wanted to add that I feel like your posts are
speaking directly
to me and maybe we can carry on this conversation in more
detail
somewhere down the road (in a different thread, I
suspect). So many
thanks for your words (even if they weren't "intended" for
me - a
fortuitous impropriety to be sure!).
Anyway, hope all is well,
greg
On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 1:02 PM, Larry Purss
<lpscholar2@gmail.com <mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>> wrote:
I'm enjoying this line [circle? spiral?] of
inquiry.
David, you wrote
The mind is a highly parsimonious thing; it is very
tiring to believe one
thing and say another. Vygotsky's genetic law predicts
that eventually it
is the former that shall cede to the latter.
I want to go out on a speculative limb that tries to
weave together some
of
Wittgenstein's notions that are also
expressed in John
Shotter's
exploration of conversation.
The question of the relation and distinction between
"taking a position"
and "developing dispositions" In David's quote above
"believing" one
thing
[a position] and "saying" [practicing
another] will
over time eventually
lead to the practice winning out over the belief.
Their are a group of scholars in Japan referred to as
"the kyoto school"
who are engaged in the project of having an indepth
conversation between
Buddhism and German Continental philosophy.
A central difference the authors of the Kyoto school
are articulating is
different notions [and values] of "intersubjectivity"
as epressed in the
contrasting concepts
"self-assertion" and "self-emptying".
They suggest many Western notions of intersubjectivity
and recognition
are
in pursuit of recognizing our assertoric
stance or
position towards
words,
self, other, & world. This assertive
position can be
expressed in
emancipatory notions of "finding one's VOICE" and
overcoming being
"silenced". Anger and conflict leading to overcoming
resistance from
within classes, races, genders. Through recognition
[being seen and
listened to develops the capacity to move from a
silenced "voice" to an
assertive "voice"] one stands up and speaks back to
the dominating
constraints and the shame and humiliation that
silences voices.
As Shotter [in Christine's quotes above shows] the
assertoric position of
challenging dominant structures and power can be seen
as expressing a
particular "attitude" or "style" or "posture".
This style or attitude valorizes "the assertoric
stance" in the world"
which develops into an enduring "disposition" if we
keep "saying" this
form
of recognition and emancipation.
However, the Kyoto School, in deep conversation with
this assertoric
"position" and "disposition" suggests or gestures
toward an "alternative"
[not truer, more real, but an alternative]
They suggest Buddhist practice and "saying" can guide
or mediate another
in*formation of "self" that they express in the
concept of "self-emptying
This is NOT a passive or resigned form of agency but
rather an active
intentional positioning of self that attempts to
foreground the
"fallibility" and "uncertainty" of ALL positioning and
assertoric
stances.
This is a deeply intersubjective practice of
valuing
"emergence" and
"openning spaces" in which to INVITE the other to
exist by the practice
of
mving our self from center stage. Finding
one's
"voice" from this
position
of ACTIVE INTENTIONAL self-emptying [and
creating the
openning space for
the other's "voice" to emerge] is a very different
"attitude" or "stance"
or "posture" to take leading to a very different
"disposition" from
within
a very different form of "saying" and
"practice".
I "read" scholars such as Wittgenstein, Shotter,
Gadamer, Buber, Levinas,
as exploring this alternative in*formation of "self"
that is less
assertoric in finding one's "voice" and moving towards
a posture of
self-emptying that embraces FALLIBILITY, UNCERTAINTY,
AMBIVALENCE, NOT
KNOWING, at the heart of this particular way of
becoming human.
I do believe this is an historically guided
perspective that embraces
multiple perspectives and multiple practices.
Intersubjectivity and dialogical hermeneutical
perspectives and the
multiple formations this conversation can take
[expressing alternative
moral committments] is the concept at the center of
this possible
inquiry.
I'm not sure how "possible" it is for
persons in North
America to
consider
such alternative moral compasses as explored
by the
Kyoto School. [it may
be beyond our horizon of understanding to envision as
a possibility].
It is also difficult to grasp Wittgenstein's attempt
to "see through"
theoretical positions as a practice and disposition.
Self-asserion is often viewed as the only path to
intentional stances and
postures in finding one's voice to participate in
GENERATIVE
conversations. Is there merit in engaging with
another tradition
exploring
agentic ACTORS actively practising
"self-emptying"
motivated by the deep
disposition and committment to generative dialogical
ways of practice.??
As I said in my opening remarks, this is going "out on
a limb". Is
conflict
and anger the ONLY motivators that can be
harnessed to
transform the
world??
I'm also aware that my position as a "white male" with
a secure job may
be
calling me to take a naive "utopian"
perspective.
At the minimum I want to suggest that it is these types of
"conversations"
across "traditions" such as the Kyoto School
scholars
are engaged in
which
invite us into a world conversation which
puts into
play the monolithic
bias towards the assertoric stance in the world.
I'm preparing for "challenges" to this alternative
"attitude" but am
putting it out there in a spirit of the holiday season
to think outside
our
Western notions of "self-assertion" and
finding one's
voice.
Larry
On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 12:04 AM, David Kellogg <
vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
<mailto:vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>>wrote:
Ivan:
At the beginning of the Philosophical
Investigations, Wittgenstein
quotes
Augustine, who describes the
indescribable
experience of learning a
first
language in Latin, and remarks that his
model of
language (a big bag of
names) is OK, but only for a very restricted
application; there are many
things we call language for which it is not
appropriate. And thence to
his
famous discussion of complexes, in the
form of
games and language games.
I think what I said was that Wittgenstein's
account of language is
pragmatic in a linguistic sense. Pragmatics is
about the use of
language,
as opposed to its usage (which is more
or less
what Augustine is
describing, language as a dictionary written in
some form of mentalese,
where every language is necessarily a foreign
language).
And I think what Wittgenstein says about language
applies to every
account
of language, even his own; it is
appropriate, but
ony for a very
restricted
application. In that way it is like a
metaphor (as
we see in the
language
games section, and the tool box section,
it really
IS a metaphor). So I
think we need to ask the question where it stops
being appropriate.
As Andy points out, it doesn't describe conceptual
thinking very well.
But
that is not because the pragmatic
account of
language is a subset of
some
larger conceptual account; I think that
the
relationship is quite the
other
way around: scientific concepts are a
rarefied,
specialized subset of
semantic meaning, and of course semantic meaning
took many centuries of
billions of daily interactions to be precipitated
from everyday
pragmatics.
Now it seems to me that on this scale of
things,
the cultural individual
really is quite unchanging and hidebound, rather
like a bottle. We
rejoice
that Western women do not bind their
feet--and
instead mutilate their
chests with silicon implants. We rejoice in not
stoning women for
adultery
and congratulate ourselves on no longer
insisting
on the male ownership
of
sexuality that this entails, but we so
stigmatize
child sexual abuse
that
children's lives, and not simply their
putative
purity, are now at risk
from pedophiles, and nobody reflects that what is
really threatened
here is
the parental ownership of sexual access
to their
children.
This morning's New York Times, just for example,
has a thoroughly silly
article on North Korea by one Nicolas Kristof. We
are told that
apartments in Pyeongyang are all equipped with
telescreens that
make propaganda announcements of, e.g., the
leaders' golf scores. We
have a
similar telescreen in our apartment in
Seoul,
which announces municipal
elections and tells where to find the local leader
of the anti-communist
militia. The difference is that when we do it is
feels normal.
Kristof certainly does not feel hidebound; he is
quite comfortable in
his
own skin. Nevertheless, he tells a
wildly
brainwashed account of the
way in
which North Korea developed nuclear
weapons. He
correctly remembers
that in
1994 an agreement was negotiated to
build nuclear
power plants in North
Korea (he carefully omits to say that these would
be non-weaponizable
and built by South Korean companies). Now,
according to Kristof, the
Clinton administration only did this because they
fooishly assumed that
the
regime would collapse before the
reactors were
actually built! Wisely,
the
Bush administration caught the North
Koreans
"cheating", and tore up the
agreement.
What really happened, as anybody with a memory
longer than the Bush
adminstration will tell you, was that the North
Koreans asked for, and
got,
a codicil that would supply them with
fuel oil for
energy as a stopgap
measure (if you look at the widely circulated
satellite picture of North
Korea at night you will see why they insisted on
this). The Clinton
Administration always boasted that the fuel oil
they supplied was
unusably
poor, but that was not enough for the
Bush
adminstration. They simply
reneged on the agreement. But the North did not
renege: they had
promised
they would develop nuclear weapons if
the deal
fell through, and that is
what they did.
Why does Kristof tell this transparent lie?
Doesn't it go against the
usual NYT ethos of telling the truth about
checkable and trivial
matters so
as to be able to deceive with the
necessary
authority when it comes to
the
essentials? I think, alas, Mr. Kristof
simply
cannot control himself any
more (see his WILDLY improbable tale about a
husband executing his own
wife
for writing a highly implausible letter
to Kim
Jeong-il himself). The
leather mask has become a face.
And I think that is probably what happened to poor
Leontiev as well. The
mind is a highly parsimonious thing; it is very
tiring to believe one
thing
and say another. Vygotsky's genetic law
predicts
that eventually it is
the
former that shall cede to the latter.
It is that sense in which what Mike says is true:
Vygotsky's psychology,
as a scientific system, describes the development
of institutionalized
lying just as accurately as it describes the
development of higher
concepts. What I wanted to say was that his
earlier sense that ideas are
always embodied, and some bodies are gifted with
an extraordinary
foresight, is also true. I think Vygotsky knew
that he would die, but he
also knew that his ideas, so long as they were
true ones, would live.
David Kellogg
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
--- On Wed, 12/21/11, Ivan Rosero
<irosero@ucsd.edu <mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu>> wrote:
From: Ivan Rosero <irosero@ucsd.edu
<mailto:irosero@ucsd.edu>>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Interpreting Leontiev:
functionalism and Anglo
Finnish
Insufficiences
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
<xmca@weber.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>>
Date: Wednesday, December 21, 2011, 6:50 PM
David, if you agree with the summary Larry has
presented, I remain
confused
by your analogy. I read Larry's
presentation of
Kitching/Pleasant as
saying that action cobbles together further sense
within already-given
sense that is simultaneously ideal-material, and
therefore subject to
culturally and historically specific constraints
and possibilities. But
surely, this includes the bottle and the person
too, both as moving
entities (the bottle, unless highly heated, a much
more slowly moving
entity). I am not invested in any particular
reading of Leontiev, but
your
analogy as presented suggests a kind of
essential
fixity to the person
which I want to believe you don't really mean.
To be fair, your emphasis is on the wine in the
bottle. But, in this
case,
a slowly moving bottle is rather less
interesting
than a human being,
with
a rather less historically complex
relationship to
the liquid it gives
shape to.
Does what Andy refer to help here? What kind of
concept-complex (is it
enough to call it Stalinism?) helps to explain the
Leontiev at issue
here?
Or, if the critique was there from early
on, what
kind of
concept-complex
would help to explain his writings' wide
acceptance?
Or, do we forgo all this and just grab Leontiev,
as you say, "on a good
day"?
Ivan
On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 3:55 PM, David Kellogg <
vaughndogblack@yahoo.com
<mailto:vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>
wrote:
Mike wrote that as he grows older, he
becomes less attached to his
position (expressed in his editorial
commentary to Luria's
autobiography,
"The Making of Mind") that ideas
really are
highly embodied things.
Mike
says that as he grows older, he
becomes more
and more attached to
Luria's
position that only ideas matter.
But as I grow older, I become more and more
attached to Mike's
original
position that individuals really
matter. Wine
has no shape of its
own; it
really depends on what bottle we put
it in,
and the form of ideas
depends
very much on the character of the
individuals
wo carry them.
On paper, the theoretical positions of
Vygotsky and Leontiev are not
that
far apart. So when Mike asks what
presents
Vygotsky's ideas from being
pressed into service by the Stalinist state, I
think the answer has
to be
referred to the individual who
carried this
idea after all.
I think it is not accidental that one was
amenable and the other was
not,
that one's ideas were deformed and
degenerated, and the others still
amaze
by their freshness and
color. Nor is it
accidental that one lived and
one
died.
But of course death is simply the moment when
our thinking and spoken
speech must come to an end, and our written
speech, like a hermit
crab,
must find a new home in the minds
and mouths
of others. And by that
measure, it was Vygotsky who lived on, yea,
even in the mind and the
mouth
of Leontiev. Well,
Leontiev on a good day!
David Kellogg
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
PS; I think I am (once again) with Larry. I
think that if we read
(late)
Wittgenstein as a linguistic (not a
philosophical) pragmatist, that
is,
as
someone who believes
that meaning in language
comes from sense in
activity,
Wittgenstein is
perfectly consistent with what
Marx writes in the
German
Ideology (that language is practical
consciousness, real for myself
because
real for others).
Wittgenstein is
Vygotsky-compatible in other ways,
too,
e.g. his argument about
preconceptual
"families" and his argument
about
the
tool like nature of
signs.
dk
--- On Wed, 12/21/11, mike cole
<lchcmike@gmail.com
<mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>> wrote:
From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com
<mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Interpreting Leontiev:
functionalism and Anglo
Finnish
Insufficiences
To: "Larry Purss" <lpscholar2@gmail.com
<mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>>
Cc: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
<xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
<mailto:xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>>, "Morten
Nissen" <Morten.Nissen@psy.ku.dk
<mailto:Morten.Nissen@psy.ku.dk>>
Date: Wednesday, December 21, 2011, 2:12 PM
Very helpful, Larry. Thanks.
As I read the Leontiev materials what was at
issue in 1949 is whether
there
is any "third space" of
the self in the "unity
of consciousness and
activity." I take Stalinism
in these materials to refer to the way that
idealism is joined with
belief
in some sort of
"autonomous" realm of thought.
Zinchenko's work on
micromovements of the eye and perceptual
action seem to me now
significant
in exactly this respect:
they point to a rapid
simulation process
which
is
not mechanically
connected to externalized
action (as one example). If
you
know the future of
history and what is good
for everyone, all such
processes risk deviation from "the true path."
The motives of the
"healthy"
individual are supposed
to coincide with those
of the "collective" (as
represented by the general secretary of the
central committee of the
communist party). Functionalism as command and
control statism.
If we accept THIS version of CHAT, seems to me
that Phillip is
corrrect -
Use the ideas for something called
communism,
fascism, ANY form of
collective social project.
David says this is Leontiev's (AT) problem,
not Vygotsky's (CH)
problem.
Larry points
to Wittgensteinian marxism that appears to
provide a way to select
wheat
from chaff (or discover a different
level of
chaff!).
My guess is that German, Russian, and other
thinkers have already
carried
this conversation pretty far....
Morten's
citation of German work
points
to
this conclusion.
But how are we poor non_Russian, non_German
reading unfortunates
wandering
in the woods to find our
way?
mike
On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 12:08 PM, Larry Purss
<lpscholar2@gmail.com
<mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>>
wrote:
Hi Andy,
Christine, Mike
I have been hibernating on Mayne Island, a
small Island between
Vancouver
and Vancouver and
Vancouver Island.
[school break for the holidays]
No
internet except at the small
library]
I was interested in this comment from
Morten Nissen on Andy's book
Blunden, as it were, attacks it from the
“opposite” side: the
functionalism
of Leontiev’s
way of relating subject with
society. This has to do
with
how
objects and
motives appear to coincide in
Leontiev’s idealized
image of
the
true society,
that is, the society of
original communism and that of
the
Soviet Union.
Andy, it is this notion of "coinciding"
that I have difficulty with
when
reading about
Activity Theory.
Leontiev's statements such as "Education
is the decisive force which
forms
man
intellectually. This intellectual
development MUST CORRESPOND TO
THE
AIMS AND THE NEEDS
OF THE ENTIRE SOCIETY.
It must fully agree with
REAL
human needs"
I'm been browsing through an edited book
by Gavin Kitching and
Nigel
Pleasant titled "Marx and
Wittgenstein:
Knowledge, Morality,
Politics."
These authors take an
interesting
perspective on materialism &
idealism
that gives idealism its place in
our human
being [in contrast to
how I
read
Leontiev}
These authors are exploring a
Wittgensteinian Marxism that examines
Marx's
notion that
"The tradition of all the dead
generations weighs like a
nightmare on the brain of the living" A
Wittgensteinian Marxist
reading
[from the authors perspective]
would make
3 points.
1] Tradition and circumstances cannot be
understood in ABSTRACTION
FROM
the traditions and
understandings that
people have of these
circumstances.
2] WHATEVER
such varied understandings
may consist (class, culture,
gender etc) nonetheless some KINDS of
actions by historical subjects
[agents, actors] will prove impossible IF
these actions are entered
into
in
disregard to
the traditions and
circumstances directly GIVEN,
ENCOUNTERED
and transmitted from
the past
3] A principle WAY in which the TRADITIONS
OF THE DEAD GENERATIONS
weighs
like a nightmare on
the brain of the
living is that ANTECEDENT
historical
circumstances often
make it IMPOSSIBLE TO
THINK AND FEEL (and
therefore
act)in certain ways.
Historically created
material culture restricts
and
enables the making
of PARTICULAR KINDS of
history. People do not
try to
do
things and
then for "material reasons"
find they cannot do things. (
cannot
make history
as THEY PLEASE ) Such
traditions and circumstances
DEEPLY
FORM
what it is
that present generations can
DESIRE TO DO. and CONCEIVE
OF.
(as
well as what
actions they can conceive of
as being
possible/impossible,
feasible/unfeasible)
It is human action in and on the world
that inextricably LINKS
THOUGHT
(and language) TO MATERIAL
REALITY.
Historical traditions and
circumstances
are the
outcomes of previous generations
actions [intended &
unintended]
which place
constraints on present
generations. Constraints on what
they
can think, feel,
desire (and how they act)
By keeping these 3 points in mind the
authors suggest we can avoid
falling
into the DEEP
CONFUSIONS which have always
attended the
material/ideal
distinction.
The most DIRECT and comprehensible way to
SEE THROUGH this
material/ideal
distinction is to
see that all action is
simultaneously mental &
physical,
material &
ideal. Neither material or
ideal is an "epiphenomena" of
the
other.
In my reading of Leontiev in the chapter
from the book posted I
don't
see
the nuances
recognizing the depths of the
"ideal" within Marx's
theory.
This edited book, by putting
Marx into
explicit conversation is
elaborating a Wittgensteinian Marxism or a
Marxist Wittgenstein.
Larry
On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 7:39 PM, mike cole
<lchcmike@gmail.com
<mailto:lchcmike@gmail.com>>
wrote:
Below are two quotations
from Morten
Nissen's review of Andy
Blunden's
book
on activity theory. Full review in
current issue of MCA.
After presenting the quotation, a comment.
mike
-------------------
Morten Nissen on Leontiev,
functionalism, and Stalinism
….behind this terminological trouble
lies a deep theoretical
problem
in
Leontiev’s
social theory. This problem
was identified in the German
and
Scandinavian
reception (Axel & Nissen,
1993; Holzkamp, 1979;
Osterkamp,
1976) but almost
completely ignored in
the Anglo-Finnish (with
Miettinen,
2005, and
Kaptelinin, 2005, as the
noble exceptions to the
rule)—and
Blunden, as it were, attacks
it from
the “opposite” side: the
functionalism
of Leontiev’s way of relating subject
with society. This has to do
with
how
objects and motives appear to coincide
in Leontiev’s idealized
image
of
the
true society, that is, the society of
original communism and that
of
the
Soviet Union.
>From the perspective of this
functionalist utopia, a psychology
could
become relevant only in the
face of
the undeveloped and the
deviant:
as
in
fact,
according to Leontiev (1978),
children and disturbed provide
the
tasks of psychology in the
institutions of the Soviet Union. To
paraphrase:
The child who puts down her book still
has not grasped the harmony
of
society’s needs with the
desire to
learn that she *must*
develop—she has not yet developed
those “higher cultural needs.”
Bourgeois
society is
another matter, where sense
and meaning are divided in
principle, but this matter—that of
ideology and social
critique—Leontiev
sets aside and
forgets. An elaborate
critique of Leontiev’s
functionalism
was given
already in 1980 (Haug,
Nemitz,& Waldhubel, 1980), and the
background was explained by Osterkamp
(1976) in her groundbreaking
work
on
the theory
of motivation.
--------------------------------
Comment.
When I first read these passages as
part of the attempted "swap of
ideas"
that
Morten and I tried to organize
around
our reviews of Andy's book in Outlines
and MCA, I commented how
sad it
was
that the
elaborate critique that goes
back to
1980 is not in English and fully
engaged by both European and
"Ango-Finns"
(although how poor Viktor got into
that category
I do not know!).
Seems like real interchange around
these issues is long overdue.
But
given
the
progress of the last couple of
years, I'll not be
holding my breath!
--------------------------
But thinking about the issues as well
as my limited language (and
other)
capacities
allow.
mike
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--
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar
Department of Communication
University of California, San Diego
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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hmca20/18/1
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
<http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>