Re: [xmca] Vygotsky's Plural Discourse!!

[Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>]

Prompted like David by a discrete kick under the table by 
Jonna, here are my reactions to Jussi's paper.

Two big qualifications. Firstly I have no real grasp of the 
development of Vygotsky's thinking over the 10 year period 
for which his thinking is recorded. I have learnt about LSV 
in a piecemeal fashion over 25 years and can't really 
contribute to this fascinating topic. But there are others 
on this list who can ...

Secondly, anyone who starts their Bildungsroman with the 
name of Louis Althusser is bound to put me off-side.

Anyone who likes Althusser can just skip the next couple of 
paragaphs. Firstly, on the question of the "epistemological 
break" in Marx's work he was just plain wrong, as new 
translations pubished subsequent to Althusser's publishing 
his article proved.

Marx began in 1841 using the ancient Greek materialists to 
critique Hegel, turned to Hegel in the 1850s to work out his 
approach to political economy and in his final years (1882) 
was using Hegel to critique calculus in the hope of finding 
a way of using calculus in his critique of political 
economy. Where is the epistemological break? In Althusser's 
head and nowhere else.

The other thing that pisses me off with Althusser, and which 
is echoed by all the poststructuralists and echoed again 
this paper, is the claim that nothing happened in philosophy 
for 200 years between Descartes and Marx - the Italian 
Galileo? the Swiss Leibniz? the Dutch Jew Spinoza? The 
English Bacon, Hobbes and Locke? The Scotch Hume? the 
Germans Kant, Hegel, Goethe, ...? No. All that is important 
in philosophy is the Frenchman Descartes. Even the French 
atheists are ignored. Doubtless this goes down well with a 
French audience but can it be taken seriously outside of 
France? In "The Holy Family" Marx is quite explicit: he is 
*not* engaged in a critique of Descartes, Descartes is the 
antecedent of natural science and not part of the genesis of 
social criticism, in Marx's view.

After getting this off my chest, all I can make Jussi, is a 
couple of fairly minor observations.

I can't accept the relation of Vygotsky to behaviourism as 
described. Others can put the record straight, but the story 
I have heard is that in 1923 Behaviourism was made the 
"official psychology" of the Soviet Union, but in 1924 
Vygotsky made his notoriety by stepping up to the podium and 
denouncing behaviourism.

Nonetheless, as I understand it, LSV retained his admiration 
for Pavlov throughout his life and there is an element of 
behaviourism in his thinking right up to the end: Vygotsky 
studied behaviour, but on the presumption that consciousness 
could be imputed behind behaviour, just as physicists study 
meter readings on the presumption that the existence of 
physical laws can be imputed to Nature.

My reading of his 1929 studies of Pavlov is him struggling 
as methodically as possible towards finding a starting point 
for psychology. From Pavlov he learns the idea of "one 
thing." This (as Jussi mentions) is exactly like the "one 
thing" of Das Kapital (the commodity) and the germ cell of 
Goethe, ... this is a methodological problem he is wrestling 
with, brilliantly, and a complete break from positivist 
psychology. Further, the move from S-R to S-T-R i.e., the 
conditioned reflex is a brilliant *appropriation* of Pavlov, 
as I read it.

Altogether Jussi, with all due qualifications (my ignorance 
of the topic) I just don't see an "epistemological break" 
here. I don't see a sudden discovery of "genesis, emergence, 
and development." What after all is a *conditioned* reflex?

And I don't accept that Vygotsky ends up with Semiotics. You 
make some important qualifications to this characterisation, 
Jussi, and I shouldn't parody your claim. But you see, I 
think Vygotsky has retained a lot of what he learnt from 
Pavlov to the end. He never abandoned it.

Finally, all CHAT writers at one point or another, to one 
extent or another, counterpose sign and tool. But really 
this should not be exaggerated. Sign and Tool are just two 
archetypes in a whole population of mediating elements which 
also include archetypes like the human body and the child 
(future bearer of culture), with an infinite myriad of 
halfway-in-between forms like passwords, keys, walking 
sticks, and so on. All tools act psychologically just like 
signs, because they are part of a culturally produced and 
culturally significant material culture; a key is no use in 
a society without locks, it is a sign of access.

I think this point is worth making, because the 
counterposition of tools and signs is a means of 
counterprosing social behaviourism to semiotics/linguistics. 
These are false dichotomies.

Anyway, great paper Jussi. I'm only sorry that I can't make 
a better contribution. I'm sure others will.

Andy
(now to read what David said ...)





Mike Cole wrote:
> Go to http://www.lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/index.html
> and read all about it! Jussi's new paper proposed for
> discussion is now posted.
> mike
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca

--
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Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435 
Skype andy.blunden
Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm

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