[Xmca-l] Re: Did Vygotsky Ever Finish Anything?

[Andy Blunden]

Attached is JREEP 45(2)
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


David Kellogg wrote:
> Mike:
>
> Take a look at p. 25-27 of JREEP 45 (2), the letters to students and
> colleagues. It's a very interesting letter to Leontiev which LSV wrote
> from a dacha (perhaps the Izmailovo Zoo, where he sometimes stayed
> when convalescing). He says he's working on "a history of cultural
> development" (p. 27) there. But he begins by suggesting the
> "IP"--apparently instrumental psychology--has wound up "in the
> category of unprofitable pursuits", which is consistent with his
> desire to establish the difference between signs and tools
> structurally, genetically, and above all functionally. Then he calls
> Luria's chapter of "Ape, Primitive, Child":
>
> "written *wholly* according to the Freudianists (and not even
> according to Freud but according to V.F. Schmidt (her materials, M.
> Klein and other second magnitude stars; then the impenetrable Piaget
> is turned into an absolute beyond all measure, instrument and sign are
> mixed together even more...." (p. 26).
>
> He's apparently referring to the Third Chapter in the published
> version, though here he calls it the first chapter of the second part.
> Then he says the debacle is not ARL's personal fault but the result of
> the muddled thinking of the instrumental period in general.
>
> David Kellogg
> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>
> On 22 November 2014 08:21, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>   
>> Hi David--- I do not think the priority makes much of a difference with
>> respect to what we have to learn about the complexities of the issues. The
>> problems are the same whenever the criticism arose.
>>
>> I can find only two references to Luria in the index of my copy of Vol 4 of
>> Hist Psych Functions. Neither is on this topic. I have not been following
>> all the letter writing you refer to and that plays such an important role
>> in Anton's historical revolutionizing. Could you point to where he calls
>> out Luria for writing incorrect ideas in their joint book and doing, or
>> planning to do, objectionable research in Central Asia?
>>
>> I sort of like the idea of this "book" as a kind of Notebooks of the Mind.
>> Seems to characterize a lot of the way LSV worked.
>>
>> mike
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 21, 2014 at 2:13 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Mike:
>>>
>>> Anton Yasnitsky argues that Chapter Two of HDHMF must have been
>>> written "not later than 1930", contrary to the usual chronology, which
>>> is 1931-1932.
>>>
>>>  http://www.psyanima.ru/journal/2011/4/2011n4a1/2011n4a1.1.pdf
>>>
>>> If Anton is right then the manuscript was written before Luria left
>>> for Uzbekistan; if the traditional dating is correct then it was
>>> written more or less during the expedition itself and represents the
>>> kind of private misgivings about the work of his collaborators that he
>>> often expresses.
>>>
>>> If we accept Anton's chronology then there are a few problems.
>>>
>>> a)  Vygotsky's enthusiasm for the expedition (expressed in the
>>> letters) is hard to explain; Vygotsky wasn't an opportunist and he had
>>> absolutely no compunction about expressing his strong disapproval of
>>> Luria's contribution to "Ape, Primitive, and Child". Why would he turn
>>> around and suddenly decide that the method of using laboratory
>>> experiments in the field was okay?
>>>
>>> b) Anton says that the two parts of HDHMF are unrelated--they were
>>> pasted together by the Soviet editor. But the beginning of the book
>>> clearly prefigures the ending (see Ch. 1, p. 7 in the English Volume
>>> Four, second para) and the end of the book also refers to the
>>> beginning (see Ch. 15, p. 241, first three paras).
>>>
>>> c) Vygotsky says that the second half of the book was done first (see
>>> above paragraphs, and also p. 3, para 5). Anton has it the other way
>>> aroud.
>>>
>>> It seems to me that the biggest problem with Anton's analysis is not
>>> the chronology, though. It's that Anton does not recognize that HDHMF
>>> is a major work; he doesn't even recognize it as authorial, because
>>> Vygotsky doesn't include it in any of the lists of his published and
>>> unpublished work.
>>>
>>> Anton's certainly right that Vygotsky did not include the work in his
>>> CV. But I think that the explanation is this: it was a private
>>> manuscript, like the notebooks that Da Vinci and Wittgenstein kept.
>>> Vygotsky used it to try to work out his own ideas for his own benefit.
>>> That's why Chapter Four contains all this mind-changing, where
>>> Vygotsky says that maybe Titchener is right and there are two stages
>>> of behavior, but maybe Buhler is right, and there are three, but there
>>> are really four, but the fourth one is sui generis, so maybe Buhler is
>>> right after all. And that's why the manuscript contains his misgivings
>>> about what Luria was up to.
>>>
>>> Although I think it is a private manuscript (and that's why it has no
>>> title--the title is one that the Soviet editors made up out of the
>>> first five words of Chapter One) I also think it was, quite unlike
>>> Thinking and Speech, an almost finished book. Of course, Vygotsky
>>> never really finished anything: his mind is a discourse and not a
>>> text. But that's true of minds quite generally, in  a sense finishing
>>> his books and leaving new books unfinished is what we are all here
>>> for.
>>>
>>> For example--a thought occurs to me. The lifespan of early man appears
>>> to have been somewhere in the low thirties, rather like other
>>> primates. At age fifteen, early man would be middle aged. Did they
>>> even have children back then?
>>>
>>> David Kellogg
>>> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>>>
>>>       
>>
>> --
>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science with an
>> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>>     
>
>
>   
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