[Xmca-l] Re: Writing date of Leontiev - The Present Tasks of SovietPsychology ?

Fri Apr 14 14:56:36 PDT 2017

Mike indicates grounding our analyses in everyday activities as a focus.
Alfredo highlights the many current manifestations of Marxian psychology in our current explorations.

This may be an appropriate moment to consider  Wolff Michael Roth’s 2006 article (A Dialectical Material Reading of the sign) posted here on April 9 2017.
Page 141 to 144   opens the article with an empirical example of everyday activities and identifies the way signs are exchanged at 3 different levels.
1st) sign complexes are ‘traded’ between research assistant and participant
2nd) the person actually ‘translates’ one sign complex into another sign complex. (graph into text)
Another kind of ‘translation’ occurs while the scientist follows a curve on the graph with his pencil, thereby ‘reproducing’ the curve iconically
3rd) Roth’s article does NOT feature the original sign complex, but in a manner that (reflects) its content, uses other material sign complexes to point back to the original sign complexes EXCHANGED during the encounter between the research assistant and participants in the empirical example.

With this grounding ‘in’ and ‘of’ exchange levels, Roth moves to Marxian notions of exchange and exchange value through exploring ‘commensurability’. On page 143 Roth claims:

‘Commensurability, that is sameness in the face of difference, is at the HEART of Karl Marx’s (1976) Capital, and in particular the dialectic of commodities.’

Then Roth moves to this (as if relation) between sign complexes and commodities. In Roth’s words:

‘It therefore appears as if there is some similarity between signs and commodities UNDER the light of their role and function in EXCHANGE processes’

I find Roth’s exploration of ‘commensurability’ at the ‘heart’ of Marx’s writing (sign complexes) under the light of exchange relations a fascinating way of understanding (sameness in the face of difference).
A theme of symmetry in the face of asymmetry.
My turn is up but I find Wolff Michael and Alfredo’s collaboration generative.

Sent from my Windows 10 phone

From: Alfredo Jornet Gil
Sent: April 14, 2017 11:19 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Writing date of Leontiev - The Present Tasks of SovietPsychology ?

Wow, great historical and bibliographical references, thanks.

I just found this 2017 book, where Andy B. has a chapter, and which is one example (or rather several, as it is an edited volume) of what in the present day is taken to be a Marxist psychology. 

Ratner, C., & Silva, D.N.H. (Eds.) (2017). Vygotsky and Marx: Toward a Marxist Psychology. Routledge.

https://books.google.ca/books?hl=no&lr=&id=ZOyfDgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT126&ots=YeTJ4fOp-h&sig=papwRk5IKK3cJIKophwMNOQOMhM&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
________________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu>
Sent: 14 April 2017 18:06
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Writing date of Leontiev - The Present Tasks of Soviet Psychology ?

The experience of reading those articles helped to deepen our understanding
of the Vygotsky-Leontiev falling out, Clay. For those, like myself, for
whom the grounding of our analyses in everyday activities is a central
concern, Leontiev gave a way to motivate deeper theorizing of the "context"
of mediated action.

Along with Yrjo Engestrom, Arne Raiethel, Alfred Lang, and others we came
up with the "chat" name for attempts to supersede the differences between
them. Pushed toward extremes signocentricism and authoritarian behaviorism,
we opted for both/and.

We have been chatting here ever since. And as you can see, recycling and
re-thinking prior understandings as we go.

mike

On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 7:19 AM, Clay Spinuzzi <clay.spinuzzi@utexas.edu>
wrote:

> Thanks, David, Mike, and Haydi, for your efforts and for the link to the
> older xmca thread! I appreciate the context as well as the link to the PDF.
> CS
>
>
> Message: 18
> > Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2017 08:09:57 +1000
> > From: David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Writing date of Leontiev - The Present Tasks of
> >         Soviet Psychology ?
> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> > Message-ID:
> >         <CACwG6Dt=D9PusFzK8KZNq0uwd8yiXWaNUg_S3BtiOf8Fo7jNvw@mail.
> > gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> > Clay:
> > We discussed this text on xmca back in 2011, e.g.
> > http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Mail/xmcamail.2011_12.dir/msg00047.html
> > Here's what Mike said at the time:
> > "From the book itself, it is difficult to date the articles or to link
> them
> > to a particular occasion. The book was published in 1961 and came from
> > East Germany. From the introductory material by Hans Hiebsch, an East
> > German
> > > psychologist, it appears to have followed the "Victory of Lysenko in
> > August 1948." It appeared in "Soviet Pedagogy" in Number 1, 1949. I do
> not
> > have a copy.
> > I think I have a copy of it back in my library in Korea, in a pamphlet
> put
> > out by psychiatrists sympathetic to the Communist Party--sometime in the
> > mid-fifties, at the height of the McCarthy witch-hunt. But I'm in
> Australia
> > right now!
> > David Kellogg
> > Macquarie University
>
>
> --
> Dr. Clay Spinuzzi
> Associate Chair, Department of Rhetoric and Writing
> University of Texas at Austin
> 208 W. 21st St., Stop B5500
> Austin, TX  78712-1038
>