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

Sat Apr 15 07:25:01 PDT 2017

Michael, I am aware this thread is focused on Leontiv and tasks of soviet society.
Your prompts may need their own particular thread (the idea OF the plural singular)??

If it is agreeable to include your and Alfredo’s insights into the orbit/trajectory of this thread (enlarging it's scope) I hesitantly move to note 3 (page 168) of your 2006 article.

Your premise that ‘sign complexes’ & ‘commodities’ share a family resemblance because of (a third). That third is the nature ‘of’ exchange value that lies ‘under’ both ‘sign complexes’ & ‘commodities’. This (third) implying ‘commensurability’ at the HEART OF (Dad Kapital).

This trajectory (possibly subsumed under the theme: Plural-singular) is moved forward in your note 3. 
You express in this note that Karl Marx opens (Dad Kapital) with ‘commodity’ but does not define this term PRIOR to beginning his analysis but allows the ‘nature of’ commodity to emerge in the course of his analysis AS SOMETHING that has ‘use value’ & ‘exchange value’.
This being the ‘nature of’ the ‘third’.
This trajectory is in the (spirit of) Wittgenstein, according to which a word does not have meaning
BUT
That the meaning lies in its use (exchange value).
This indicating a family resemblance between Marx (in the German Ideology) & Wittgenstein’s (Philosophische Untersungen).

I acknowledge all this is new and challenging to understand. My intent is to try to move along WITHIN the orbit of this trajectory squiring a ‘feeling’ of the mood. 
Is it time or appropriate to open a new thread titled (Plural-Singular Realization)? The theme exploring the ‘nature of’ thirds that include the nature of ‘other’ terms as faces, factors, facets, aspects, of the UNIT as ‘third’

Possibly turning to Jean-Luc Nancy?.
An open question

Sent from my Windows 10 phone

From: Wolff-Michael Roth
Sent: April 14, 2017 5:18 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Writing date of Leontiev - The Present Tasks ofSovietPsychology ?

Larry,
the idea can also be expressed in the Spinozist manner: singular plural or
plural singular. The philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy---someone who doesn't
require mediation, and who writes about mediation that mediates nothing,
has articulated this idea of the plural singular. Some Spinozist Marxian
scholars, too, are taking this route.
Michael

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wolff-Michael Roth, Lansdowne Professor
Applied Cognitive Science
MacLaurin Building A567
University of Victoria
Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2
http://web.uvic.ca/~mroth <http://education2.uvic.ca/faculty/mroth/>

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On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 2:56 PM, <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> >
>
>