Re: request for some clarification

From: Elina Lampert-Shepel (ellampert@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Jul 05 2003 - 20:06:47 PDT


Mike Cole <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu> wrote:

The question is too difficult for me, Elina.

Well, for me too. But I feel responsible to communicate as well as a can the meanings of Repkin's article and the question is not about the terms, but about bridging the conceptual dialog .

 

I have heard people discuss
the notion of subject of activity but never agent.

 

IThanks for the response. The word agent is foreign for me in the context of learning activity, maybe because the idea of subjectivity is so important and had specific frame of reference in Russian context for the understanding of learning activity. Vladimir Repkin, who was in charge of Kharkov Laboratory, believes that

"...learning activity should be understood as activity for the self-change of its subject...".

 assume that for
some people subject and agent are almost synonymous, for others not.
(Who/what is subject and agent for Latour, for example?).

I should re-read Latour

I also have a lot of difficulty thinking of individual activity, so the
individual/collective dimension enters the arena to confuse me further.

There will be Davydov, Slobodchikov and Zukerman article in this issue , which will probably enhance the confusion in a good sense. Repkin, though, believed as most of the founding farthers of liberating activity theory that"

A person develops as a personality only to the degree that she develops as a subject, for a person’s activity is never individual activity. Any activity that is connected with other people or involves other people , is in one way or another joint, social activity. This is the form in which a person initiates the contact with other people and interacts with them—that is, transforms herself as a subject."

Good luck with your task!

mike
PS-- For more on the sound of the violin, see the article by Ernst Boesch,
available through xmca archives. A very interesting extension of Tagore.

Thanks , I will check...Sounds intriguing...

Elina

I have on my table a violin string. It is free. I twist one end of
it and it responds. It is free. But it is not free to do what a
violin string is supposed to do - to produce music. So I take it,
fix it in my violin and tighten it until it is taut. Only then it
is free to be a violin string.
               Sir Rabindranath Tagore.

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