[Xmca-l] Word and Act

Thu Oct 30 03:02:33 PDT 2014

Attached is a PDF of the article Haydi was talking about, "Word and Act."
Andy
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*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/


Haydi Zulfei wrote:
> Dear all,
> The biased pretension is that Vygotsky was absolutely alienated in regard to the concept of 'activity' . 
> First , because Vygotsky died at an early time and did have too much upon his shoulders to resolve , not being able to read more of the 'beautiful sayings of Engels' like the one in which he stated that 'work created man' , he left a space for motley maneuverings and inserting all kinds of ideas from the West into his own original ideas and concepts which were nothing but local and native . Today , the 'rift' has become so deep not to be bridged by even a divine hand . Who invested so heavily on the rift ? His sacrificial industrious unfatiguable disciples ?? World politics , World decaying Capitalism , the number one horrendous criminal (Please have a look at Kobane , Syria , and at the whole Middle East areas and elsewhere in the World) for decades and decades tried to justify every act of onslaught , murder , plunder , terror , filth and dirt , under the banner of fear and threat of 'communism' and 'Stalinism' . West tried to make people forget the
>  crimes of Hitlerism , Francoism , Tszarism and now while they try to incessantly ring in our own ears the terrifying crashing sound of the Big Bang of the Soviet Collapse , still they don't cease to adulterate the scientific findings and concepts with the dirt of Stalinism ; they don't have ears to hear Luria's invitation to pay tribute to the just one WHOLE GENERATION of giving and inspiring people who worked for their land ; they don't have ears to hear Davydov saying 'I'm a convinced Marxist' just two or three months before his homeland went to ruin and conspiracy and selfishness of three traitors as Presidents . They don't have ears to hear 'if all science then was Stalin-made , then yours is also Bush-made' and we laugh if you talk of the open society in which you live because ...  If Academics prefer to be away from politics , then please away from all politics !! Your administration uses 'double standards' . you please don't !! Please don't
>  create such an atmosphere in which one cannot say as his opinion that 'Stalin was not the same as Hitler' --this once happened in the past with attacks and insults -- or 'Bush is no less than Stalin' . Your digestion for freedom and liberty should be great as Heavens !!
> Second , Vygotsky believes in 'activity proper' ; please don't burden him with your own tendencies . He didn't like Americans to confiscate his own ideas ; he , first of all , credited his true disciples with his great heritage ! 
> He just out of momentary negligence uses the word 'activity' with all kinds of names : speech activity , attention activity , sign activity , etc. and for 'activity proper' also he uses 'behaviour' , 'operation' , 'external and internal activity' , 'action , act' , etc. as he uses feeling , passion , emotion , etc without any precise distinction when he begins the discussion but ultimately he comes true with every aspect of his concepts . One cannot deny his 'redundancies' and 'overuses' . 
> Third , please , if possible , read volume six , conclusion , word and act , and see where he is different from ANL .
> He almost argues the way L does , except when and where he reaches the 'word' by which he means 'now the word becomes the act' . 
> But is this not just a metaphor ? Could Vygotsky have believed that 'word' , 'discourse' , 'genre' , 'dialogue' , 'talk' coming out of 'activity' according to his strong undeniable irrefutable belief , had given 'word' prevalence and precedence  over 'material activity' , had driven this latter out of the domain , had announced itself not needy and quite free of 'material activity' ?? Always Primary ?? Yes , is this the case ??
> Yes , I know all about its impact : organizing , communicating , cognizing , conceptualizing , sublimating , novel-forming , etc. etc. but let's remind ourselves of his ... IN THE BEGINNING ... IN THE END ... as things forgotten by his readers !! It seems that an allergy is to be found here that logically and unpolitically should be wiped out ; otherwise , there would not be so much room for its being libertarian and scientific !!
> Best
> Haydi         
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>  From: ‪mike cole‬ ‪<mcole@ucsd.edu>‬
> To: ‪"eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"‬ ‪<xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>‬ 
> Sent: Wednesday, 29 October 2014, 17:52:54
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: In defense of Vygotsky ["Sense and meaning" really means consciousness, which really means intellectualism]
>  
>
>
> Lubomir--
>
> A couple of comments that i put in the text in red
>
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 8:26 AM, Lubomir Savov Popov <lspopov@bgsu.edu>
> wrote:
>
>   
>> Hi Annalisa,
>>
>> I was waiting a bit to see if someone else will chime in.
>>
>> If we refer to Soviet (now Russian) psychology:
>> -- They prefer to talk about consciousness rather than mind.
>> -- All psychological functions and states emerge in the process of human
>> activity.
>> --Consciousness is a major category in historical materialism and
>> therefore has to be accepted as a major category by the social science
>> disciplines. There are
>>     
>  different interpretation of the concept of
>   
>> consciousness in different social science disciplines. However, they all
>> had to refer to historical materialism. No one was bigger than historical
>> materialism. Consciousness is also used in several ways in everyday life.
>> But that is another story. The kinds of usage should not be mixed.
>>
>>     
> At that time American psychologists could not talk about or think as
> professionals about a category called consciousness.
>
> I wrote a review of the Payne book about Rubenshtein a loooooooooooooong
> time ago. I will try to find and reproduce as an artifact of one
>  encounter
> of the two ways of thinking. 
>
>
>
>   
>> Also:
>> --LSV was sidelined pretty early by Rubinstein. The interest in LSV
>> resurfaced in the 1980s, but was not too strong. ANL and his students were
>> reigning and that time.
>>
>>     
>
> Here you want to be more careful. The period of ANL's ascendancy declined
> after 1966 and it was Rubensteinians who gained power. Epitome of that
> counter-development in the appointment of Lomov to head of Academy
> Institute, to be followed by Brushlinskii. 
>
>
>   
>> --ANL had quite of a power struggle with Rubinstein. ANL and his
>> students/protégés ruled the psychology domain in the USSR at their life
>> time.
>>  An overstatement as above.
>>
>> -- Almost all textbooks in psychology after 1970 were written by the ANL
>> circle. After 1970 Rubinstein was not published much and maybe not at all.
>> The last psychology textbook by Rubinstein that I have seen was from the
>> 1960s (first edition 1940).
>> -- Rubinstein was the
>>     
>  first (if memory serves) to formulate the principle
>   
>> of the unity of consciousness and activity. However, many sources claim he
>> heavily used works of LSV.
>>     
>
> This is really news to me. Who claimed that and did anyone believe them?
>
>
>   
>> Of course, all historical materialists hold to the principle that
>> consciousness emerges in the process of activity; it is a product of
>> activity and everyday life environment of the subject.
>> It is so-znanie, with-knowledge, knowledge-with-an other. In my view,
>> the residue of joint mediated actions-in-activity. All full
>>     
>  of holes and
>   
>> gaps, but recountable.
>>
>> Researchers from Russia can provide more precise account.
>> that would be great. 
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Mike (too)
>>     
>
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