Jenna, I will give you my response to your question as best I can.
My theoretical home is Vygotsky reading Marx reading Hegel, OK?
Foucault doesn't really fit into that, but I find that Foucault (and
his interpreters in post-structural theory, especially feminists)
have given us such valuable insights, that I am happy to welcome
them into my mind and try to work with them.
But I have never been able to integrate Vygotsky/Marx/Hegel with
Foucault, in the way they fit with each other, coming from the one
intellectual stream. I might say that the popularity of Vygotsky in
the US from the late 1970s was owed in part to that much maligned
book "Mind in Society," but in large measure was also due to the
student radicalism afrfecting campuses and the students were looking
for a radical critique of psychology, and Vygotsky provided that.
I find myself checking what I think, thanks to help from
Vygotsky/Marx/Hegel against what I think Foucault would say. And
vice versa. Certainly there are simplistic elements of "orthodox
Marxism" (such as was taught by the Communist Parties during the
Soviet days), extreme idealistic positions in Hegel, and some
naivete at times in Vygotsky, which in these postmodern times we can
see are mistaken, and that is partly thanks to Foucault as well as
quite simply the times we live in. It is not too difficult to take
these simplistic elements out of the legacy of Hegel-Marx-Vygotsky
without touching what is essential. For example, it would be
ridiculous nowadays to take Hegel's "formation of consciousness" to
be represented in a single nation-state. That is almost self-evident
to us today, because every nation-state is riddled with
contradictions between conflicting projects, a.k.a, "formations of
consciousness" or "projects" or "social formations." No nation-state
is a harmonious community in any sense at all. For example, some of
our Russian friends still, loing after the fall of the USSR, still
take their culture to be historically superior to that of indigenous
cultures, as a totality. That implies the same kind of totalisation
just alluded to. Again, I think we owe these better insights to
Foucault and other late-20th century thinkers ... and the nature of
our own times! But I find that at a foundational level, these latter
philosophers are wanting. That's my opinion. But as we found last
month, my understanding of Foucault is also far from perfect. Others
will have to give more informed answers.
Andy
Jenna McWilliams wrote:
... about how folks conceive a poststructural frame(ing) of
sociocultural theory and, in particular, of CHAT.
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