[Xmca-l] Re: A question on Vygotsky and Imagination

[mike cole]

Hi Shannon- I am really uncertain about how to contribute to the discourse
of political science but perhaps its through the notion of global
discourse.

In my prior note on the Dialogue of Cultures school, I said that it
demanded, in addition to a pretty well off segment of any existing state, a
really global set of polylogues to avoid the problems of the binary
involved in the notion of dia - logue. I had not connected this with the
question of imagination.

>From recent discussion with Russian colleagues, it seems that the entire
line of work that descends from Zaporozhets, which includes Zinchenko and
Bodrova (in the US), Kudravstev (in Russia) focuses on the Kantian notion
of productive imagination. They analyze this notion in terms of early
developmental processes. An article by Repina in *The psychology of
Preschool Children* edited by Zaporozhets and Elkonin provides some notion
of the early theorizing. Articles by Zaporozhets in the *Journal of
Russian and East European Psychology* might be helpful. Vladimir Kudravstev
is currently continuing this line of work.

The work of the playworlds consortium, published in MCA
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10749030903342246?journalCode=hmca20#previewis
perhaps relevant.

Finally, I attach a paper that discusses imagination from what we take to
be a Vygotskian perspective or at least an inspiration.

Hard to imagine that imagination is everywhere one looks.... but such is
the nature of human thought! :-)

mike


On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 10:45 AM, Greg Thompson
<greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>wrote:

> Shannon,
> This looks like a wonderfully interesting project!
> As for thoughts here, I wonder what others on the list think, but with
> regard to your third limitation of Vygotsky's idea of imagination and
> whether or not it is intersubjective, I wonder if that is accurate.
> Generally speaking, I think of Vygotsky's main points as being that
> thinking is fundamentally intersubjective so it is difficult for me to
> imagine (!) how imagination could be otherwise. Perhaps you have some
> specific writings where you see this? Or perhaps we mean something
> different by these terms?
> I'm sure you're already familiar with them, but some other classics to
> consider are Bakhtin's Dialogic Imagination and Volosinov's Marxism and the
> Philosophy of Language are two other very good places to look for
> developing a Vygotsky-like approach to imagination. When put together with
> Vygotsky, I think they make for a powerful trio for understanding
> imagination in politics!
> Hope to hear more.
> -greg
>
>
> On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 10:02 PM, Shannon Brincat <
> shannonbrincat@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> > Dear all,
> >
> > I am new to this list ­ so thanks for your time.
> >
> > Presently, I am trying to write up an article on Vygotsky and
> imagination.
> > Essentially, my interest is to draw attention to a different way of
> looking
> > at, and deploying imagination in politics, and one that emphases its
> > creative potential. In my field, International Relations (IR) imagination
> > is
> > just ignored as something fanciful rather than intrinsic to human
> > cognition.
> >
> > I have pasted the abstract below. Any advice on secondary literature, or
> > even key aspects of Vygotsky’s work that you deem relevant, would be
> great.
> >
> > Once again, thanks!
> >
> > Shannon
> >
> >
> > This article seeks to demonstrate the political significance of
> > imagination and to reclaim this cognitive faculty as something intrinsic
> > to political life ins world politics. We focus on the psychological work
> of
> > Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (1896-1934) who, we argue, offers a
> > reconceptualisation of the faculty of imagination as a key part of human
> > cognitive development and as something central to creative activity.
> After
> > engaging with the limitations in Kant’s productive imagination, Husserl’s
> > phenomenological imagination, and Freud’s irrational understanding of
> > imagination, we emphasise three elements of Vygotsky’s analysis that
> > demonstrate the significance of imagination to politics that are
> routinely
> > denied in mainstream approaches to International Relations (IR). These
> > include how the faculty of imagination is developmental, interpenetrated
> > with reality, and dependent on social-history and culture. While we
> contend
> > that Vygotsky offers significant advances in how we can conceive and
> > approach the faculty of imagination in political thought, in the closing
> > section we identify three weaknesses. Firstly, while Vygotsky offers a
> link
> > between imagination and practice, and was concerned with progressive
> social
> > development, it offers only a weakly developed account of imagination¹s
> > link
> > to political praxis. Secondly, Vygotsky¹s account tells Us only of the
> > positively productive elements of imagination but he did not turn his
> > attention to the 똡arkside of imagination regarding the politics of fear,
> > 똮thering, and hate. Thirdly, Vygotsky provides only a thin account of the
> > intersubjective processes of imagination and offers only the beginnings
> of
> > a
> > theory that could embed imagination within social-relations. We close by
> > advancing a heuristic of imagination that can help us better understand
> > this
> > complex faculty of imagination and its relation to politics.
> >
> > Dr. Shannon K. Brincat
> > Griffith University Research Fellow
> > Room -1.09 | Building N72 | Centre for Governance and Public Policy |
> > School
> > of Government and International Relations
> > Nathan Campus | Griffith University | 170 Kessels Road | Nathan |
> Brisbane
> > |
> > Queensland | 4111 | Australia
> >
> > Global Discourse, Co-Editor
> > http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rgld20#.Ua53eCsd7pM
> >
> > New edited series available through Praeger
> > Communism in the 21st Century (3 Vols.)
> > http://www.abc-clio.com/product.aspx?isbn=9781440801259
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 883 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>
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