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[xmca] vygotsky in perspective: kategoria

Mike, I was wondering if these experiences can be tied together with a rather strange connection? May I thank *Deanya Lattimer*, a fairly new XMCA correspondent whose discipline is Rhetoric, for the attached article entitled "Kategoria and Apologeia" from the /Quarterly Journal of Speech/. It seems that the ancients catgorised speeches (as in oratory) into two basic genre, viz., accusatory and defensive, a.ka. kategoria and apologeia. "Apologeia" is a term fairly well known in common parlance, but if you are in the business of political speech writing and so on, kategoria is an even more important concept. By making an accusatory speech, either against person or policy, it is said that you *create *an image, while apologeia can only try to *modify *the image created by kategoria or accusatory speech (think of accusative case in grammar). Or in common parlance, when you throw mud, some always sticks. Once you have accused someone, you have created an image, and it down to the accused to try to clean off the mud. So it seems that this technique of making a point, by means of kategoria, or accusatory speech, is as old as civilisation itself. The interesting thing is that this is exactly how our friend who first drew our attention to "kategoria" works, by accusing everyone in sight of this or that atrocity! Separately, another friend has provided me with a translation of of the /Soviet Dictionary of Philosophy/ of the 1950s, entry on kategoria, written by Spirkin, and although this definition basically goes just as we would all expect, following mainly Kant's line of interpretation of Category and Marxist criticis of it, it does recognise at the outset among the various meanings of "kategoria" in Rusian "accusation". So I suspect that the situation in Russian may not be a lot different from what it is in English. Separately again, while it does indeed seem that Meyerhold's dictionary is lost to us, he has a complete works published in French translation, which I am currently looking into. 

Andy

mike cole wrote:

Seriously Anton? I was asked to review the book but had to decline for
ethical reasons.

I guess if this is as good as V&V  that checks me out of the game.  So far
as I can tell, people like Jim Wertsch and I were SO wrong, that either we
were unbelievably stupid (in which case, what nefarious things did we do to
be allowed to do any interpreting at all!?) or
we are just a bad lot. Or maybe both?

As Peter says, it stops short of shooting!
mike


On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 9:13 AM, Anton Yasnitsky <the_yasya@yahoo.com>wrote:


Thanks for posting this, Peter!


The book is an absolute and unconditional treasure, a mandatory reading for
anybody interested in Vygotskian issues, and, I truly believe, it  will soon
become a classic source, like van der Veer and Valsiner's (1991)
"Understanding Vygotsky".


For those interested, some excerpts are available online @
http://www.cambridge.org/aus/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9781107001862

Anton



________________________________
From: Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 11:29:06 AM
Subject: [xmca] FW: vygotsky in perspective

I just got notice of a new book on LSV:

Main Author:       Miller, Ronald, 1943-

Title:             Vygotsky in perspective / Ronald Miller.

Primary Material:  Book

Subject(s):        Vygotskii, L. S. (Lev Semenovich), 1896-1934.
                   Psychologists Soviet Union.
                   Psychology Soviet Union History.

Publisher:         Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press,
                      2011.

Description:       xiii, 451 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Notes:             Includes bibliographical references and index.
                   "Lev Vygotsky has acquired the status of one of the
grand
                      masters in psychology. Following the English
translation
                      and publication of his Collected Works there has been
a
                      new wave of interest in Vygotsky accompanied by a
                      burgeoning of secondary literature. Ronald Miller
argues
                      that Vygotsky is increasingly being 'read' and
                      understood through secondary sources and that
scholars
                      have claimed Vygotsky as the foundational figure for
                      their own theories, eliminating his most distinctive
                      contributions and distorting his theories. Miller
peels
                      away the accumulated layers of commentary to provide
a
                      clearer understanding of how Vygotsky built and
                      developed his arguments. In an in-depth analysis of
the
                      last three chapters of Vygotsky's book Thinking and
                      Speech, Miller provides a critical interpretation of
the
                      core theoretical concepts that constitute Vygotsky's
                      cultural-historical theory, including the development
of
                      concepts, mediation, the zone of proximal
development,
                      conscious awareness, inner speech, word meaning and
                      consciousness"--

Table of Contents: Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction; 2. A
                      thematic overview; 3. The development of concepts; 4.
                      The development of scientific concepts; 5. The
                      development of scientific concepts: critique; 6.
Thought
                      and word; 7. Michael Cole
                   artifact mediated action: setting the record straight;
8.
                      James V. Wertsch
                   cultural tools and mediated action: getting it wrong; 9.
                      James V. Wertsch: mediation and the zone of proximal
                      development; 10. The essential commentators; 11.
                      Vygotsky: mediation.

Location:          On Order for Stacks
Call Number:       No call number available


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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744 
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
MIA: http://www.marxists.org

Attachment: Ross_KategoriaAndApologia.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

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