Bill,
I find passages like the following
>provides a means to deliberately
> improve the uptake of historical texts into what we are doing today.
>
to be perplexing.
In relation to the discussion of practical implications of AT as we've been
assimilating/interpreting it in the course of the ANL reading , the notion
of "historical texts" not only seems to appear from nowhere within the AT
framework but in itself it is perhaps opposed to the framework of activity
theory itself (as I understand it). Within AT I don't see how one can
distinguish text from subject reading text. Rather we have a situation in
which the social text is created in the functioning of the totality of
activity systems --
but maybe I have it all wrong since I'm really uncertain about what you
mean by "historical text", how such an object fits into any activity
system, how it itself is produced, and how it relates to the other AT
fundamental concepts we have been discussing.; e.g, is it a mediating
artifact or an element of the rules. If there's to be a syncretistic
joining, at least it would be useful to have that more fully clarified. It
just seems to me that "historical text" hasn't been analyzed at all from the
perspective of activity theory, something I would think necessary before
throwing that notion into a smorgasbord along with potentially contradictory
concepts, such as reflection, that would analyze "historical texts"
themselves as the products of activity systems, not at all of the same
level of abstraction. It seems to me this is an issue worth exploring.
What is history from the perspective of activity theory?
This is important in Ilyenkov, for whom the genesis of ideas in social
practice precedes their internalization/ theorization (see Dialectics of
Concrete and Abstract on historical method in Marx). I believe it to be
also important to a broader understanding of history and especially the
problem of historico-culturally specific individualities or personalities.
Paul H. Dillon
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