[Xmca-l] Re: Help? Vygotsky train ride

[David Kellogg]

Greg: There is a "reconstruction" of the trip to London by Rene Van der Veer:


van der Veer, R. and Zavershneva, E. (2011). To Moscow with love:
Partial reconstruction of Vygotsky’s trip to London. J Integrative
Psychological and Behavioral science. (Published with open access at
Springerlink.com)

I remember him fighting with his wife before he left and then making
up through letters, and also being somewhat astonished that there was
no reference to the Great General Strike, which must have occurred
just before his trip.

It's also very interesting to read the reconstruction side by side
with the paper which Vygotsky wrote for the conference and never
presented. At first glance the paper seems a little sophomoric: it
confirms what people say about Vygotsky starting his career as an
apparatchik (of Kornilov at Moscow U and of Krupskaya in the
Narkompros).

But it contains at least three of the key ideas that are still there,
after all the vicissitudes of his stormy life, in Thinking and Speech:
the rejection of dualism, the sophisticated materialism based on
social relations, and the approach to language that is semic rather
than syntactic.

David Kellogg
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

On 1 October 2014 05:25, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was trying to find an XMCA post that mentioned a train ride that Vygotsky
> was taking on his way to London and was writing a letter to his wife (yes,
> I know that a boat would have to be involved at some point if he wanted to
> get to London...).
> I searched the archives for the usual words but couldn't find it.
> Does anyone remember this conversation? Or, does anyone know about the
> letters that V would have written?
> -greg
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 882 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
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