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

[David Kellogg]

Sorry--I should have said "the woman's thirstiness cannot draw water, only
the woman's weak arm can do that", not "the counterbalance cannot draw
water". Now I will shut up and go draw myself some coffee.

David Kellogg
Macquarie University

On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 3:31 AM, Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com>
wrote:

> HI — I followed the link provided by Mike:
>
> >> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Mail/xmcamail.2011_12.dir/msg00047.html
>
>
> which got me started reading the chapter by Hiebsch, where I found what I
> copy below. Isn’t the discussion about mediation a revival of this
> fundamental issue? Idealism means dualism; the existence of something
> non-material which we would call “mind” or “consciousness”.  “Materialism”
> eliminates that non-material thing, whatever it is, and turns to culture,
> words, language, history and other aspects of social interaction to explain
> how human beings differ from animals.
>
> I don’t see how mediation exposes CHAT to the charge of dualism, though/ I
> would say mediation is necessary to avoid the charge of dualism. What you
> pick to do the mediation then is the question.
>
> It’s a pretty riviting chapter.  Here’s a quote from pages 12-13:
>
> "The history of psychology, like that,
> of other sciences, is the history of the conflict between
> materialism and idealism. All progressive thinkers were
> adherents of the materialist theory, while idealism al-
> ways provided a foundation of reactionary views. It not
> only hampered the progress of sciences, but was an
> obstacle to their very formation. We define idealism as
> all philosophical theories according to which the psychic
> factor is something autonomous and independent of mat-
> ter; i.e., it is not a special property of matter, nor is it
> a product of the brain. We define materialism, on the
> contrary, as all the theories which start from the assump-
> tion that the psychic factor has no independent existence,
> but is only a property of matter and is formed in the
> long process of its development.”
>
> This is particularly interesting to me becuase of working with researchers
> in Viet Nam — where the education system post-1975 was heavily influenced
> by the USSR. the few social scientists i have met recognize the name
> Vygotsky but i’ll bet that their view of his work is all the post-1936
> version, which would explain a lot about what I am running into.
>
> H
>
> Helena Worthen
> helenaworthen@gmail.com
> Berkeley, CA 94707
> Blog about US and Viet Nam: helenaworthen.wordpress.com
>
>
>
> > On Apr 15, 2017, at 7:25 AM, <lpscholar2@gmail.com> <
> lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > 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/>
> >
> > New book: *The Mathematics of Mathematics
> > <https://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/new-
> directions-in-mathematics-and-science-education/the-
> mathematics-of-mathematics/>*
> >
> > 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
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
>