Re: [xmca] Where is the historical dimension of the ZPD?

From: Mike Cole (lchcmike@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Dec 04 2006 - 17:11:27 PST


Since you are familiar with the general line of work, including, for
example, the analysis of the 7 brothers and huck finn, the issue beocmes how
to move from fiction to (excuse the ontological claims)
real life.

What would you suggest?
mike

On 12/4/06, Paul Dillon <phd_crit_think@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, mike, I'm very familiar with that work and have used it here in
> Ayacucho and the UNSCH. But I don't find Yrjo present here where these
> issues are being discussed and, with the exception of the work on the
> transition from traditional medical practices, Yrjo, who was an exchange
> student in Eureka, hasn't followed up this line, and certainly has never
> addressed it to the implicit class dimensions of the ZPD.
>
> Paul
>
> *Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>* wrote:
>
> You might want to check out Engestrom's Learning by Expanding for a way to
> think of zoped's in terms of cultural-historical time, Paul. Its on the
> web
> at lchc.
> mike
>
> On 12/4/06, Paul Dillon wrote:
> >
> > Sasha, mike, Mike, all,
> >
> > The braid that has developed around the initial issue of empirical
> > evidence for Vygotsky's ZPD has delved deep into the foundations of
> > CHAT. Throughout I have been wishing that my books weren't located in
> > various storage spaces 9,000 miles to the north. Although there are
> > internet archives (especially MIA) that contain the materials I wanted
> to
> > consult, but they are so much more difficult to use than my already-read
> > books with their dog-ears and underlines, highlighted passages and
> commented
> > margins. I foresee the need to develop a much more digital orientation
> > since dog-ears and underlines are really much easier in
> electronic/digital
> > formats. But I don't have that at present so didn't participate much.
> >
> > But I found that several people, especially Sasha, posted detailed
> > discussions of the fundamental theoretical bases and I've been content
> > reading what others have posted; in particular, the recognition that
> > Ilyenkov produced the most important body of work for expanding
> Vygotsky's
> > dialectical materialist framework.
> >
> > But where is the historical dimension? History – tradition –
> > culture. Vygotsky's ZPD, if anything, is a relation between someone who
> is
> > being guided to functional competence within a cultural tradition (could
> be
> > making a guitar, could be learning algebraic topology, could be cooking
> > roasted guinea pig or making a pisco sour) and someone who already knows
> how
> > to do it. And the person who already knows how to do it, in turn,
> learned
> > from someone else, who was at one time on the other side of the
> > relationship. And each one, yes, upon learning, added something, maybe
> in
> > some cases totally transformed what was being learned. This is the
> > historical dimension that extends across generations of human
> > individuals. And this is what seems to be totally missing from the
> threads
> > that make up the braid of the recent posts.
> >
> > Into Spinozan monism Hegel introduced History as an alienated God
> > looking for itself; Marx adopted the Hegelian progression but following
> > Feuerbach in that History had nothing to do with God trying to find
> itself
> > again but with one class of people exploiting another in the process of
> > dealing with the material necessity that all people experienced and how
> the
> > oppressed classes' struggle against its exploitation put a motor into
> the
> > process: all history is the history of class struggle (could it be
> possible
> > that Vygotsky didn't accept this?). But history-tradition-culture is
> more
> > than just a struggle of oppressed against oppressor, I think.
> >
> > Since Marx's time we've come to know a lot more about universal history
> > and consequently also seen that such a dualistic vision of exploiter and
> > exploited is much more complex than Marx depicted it; not as simple as
> > feudal lord v. serf, capitalist v. proletariat, although the underlying
> > insight has never been refuted in history, is still ongoing, as
> witnessed by
> > the synchronistic agonizing of Pinochet as the emblem of archaic
> > oppression and Fidel as the beacon of the universal liberation. As
> > witnessed by Chavez' overwhelming and repeated victories in Venezuela.
> >
> > I´ve believed for a long time that Marx, not Kant, provided the
> > Copernican revolution, but like Copernicus, needed/needs a Kepler to
> make
> > the theory fit the experience. Vygotsky, working in psychology, began to
> > provide that, but Ilyenkov put it on a firm theoretical footing. And
> > Ilyenkov, emphasized the historical dimension as the indispensable
> element:,
> > especially in his discussions of the emergence of the theory of value
> > (Abstract and Concrete, page numbers unknown, but available bedrudgingly
> > upon request) are key in this respect.
> >
> > So where is history in how XMCA/CHAT people are dealing with the
> > problem of learning? CHAT=Cultural Historical Activity Theory. A lot is
> > discussed about Activity, a little about Culture, but hardly anything at
> all
> > about History. In thinking about this, Albert Schutz´s theories of the
> > phenomenological dimensions of history are perhaps more relevant than
> Arnold
> > Toynbee's or Fernand Braudel's or any other scholastic historians´, even
> > Eric Hobsbawm or E. P. Thompson. Lived history, the history in which the
> > ZPD must be situated.
> >
> > Some of the best presentations I've heard at conferences where CHAT folk
> > present their research have had to do with the dimensions of
> > cultural-historical relevance (eg, la Aula Mágica??) where it is
> absolutely
> > clear that the historical oppression of one culture by another need be
> > addressed to achieve what Paolo Freire discovered in his own version of
> the
> > ZPD (> historical dimension . . . not empirically controlled
> laboratories aimed at
> > generating understanding. (cf. Theses on Feuerbach)
> >
> > The fear of being labelled racist has led many to reject Luria's central
> > Asian studies but something important is lost when the baby goes down
> the
> > drain with the bathwater. All this might be easier to see in countries
> > where people still live on the material bases of pre-capitalist
> > organization, communities that will go on if/when the
> > world-capitalist-system crashes and burns, tucked high away in the folds
> of
> > Andean valleys (and other such niches) with intermittent petroleum based
> > connections to Coca-Cola culture. Their resistance is understandable.
> Can
> > 'empirical' implementations of the Vygotsky's ZPD deal with this? But
> this
> > is the historical dimension.
> >
> > When I begin to learn something it is an object outside of me, like
> > learning to ride a bicycle or play the guitar, it is a struggle against
> an
> > external object. But once I have learned it, it becomes part of my own
> > subjectivity, that is, part of the way I express my freedom. Subject and
> > object dissolve into each other within a historical dimension of
> bicycles
> > and guitars and other products of particular and universal histories.
> And
> > in turn, history absorbs and dissolves the competent and a less
> competent
> > participant in its processes into the cultures and traditions and
> struggles
> > of which it composed, passed along from generation to generation. Or so
> it
> > seems to me.
> >
> > Paul Dillon
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
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