[Xmca-l] Re: Happy New Year and Perezhivanie!
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Tue Jan 10 16:54:59 PST 2017
How to understand the personality? ... i.e., the
*development* of the personality?
The subject's inheritance, and The subject's experiences
(/perezhivaniya/)
... just think of how you'd go about writing a good
biography or Bildungsroman.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
On 11/01/2017 10:24 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
> Andy:
>
> A good paradox! Word meaning is a unit, but the spoken
> word itself is just an element--a thing. We can see that
> this is, on the face of it, impossible: within a single
> holistic analysis, an element can be a part of a unit, but
> a unit can never be a part of an element. So what you are
> referring to when you say that the word is a thing is the
> "sonic" or "phasal" quality of the word: its "acoustic"
> properties, its "phonetics".
>
> But not its phonology. The word that Vygotsky uses for
> "phoneme" refers to the 1929 work of the Prague Circle,
> originally the Moscow Circle. He is a LITTLE coy about
> this, because the founders, Jakobson and Trubetskoy, were
> not very popular with the authorities and Vygotsky already
> had plenty of heterodox acquaintances to worry about.
> Nevertheless, whenever Vygotsky says "phoneme", we know he
> really means what Jakobson and Trubetskoy called
> "morphophonemes". We know this because the examples he
> actually gives--Russian case endings--are morpho-phonemes
> and not simply phonemes: so for example in English the
> sound /s/ is a simple phoneme when I say the word "self"
> but if I say "Andy's" the sound /s/ is a morpho-phoneme: a
> difference in sounding that makes a difference in meaning.
> The system (that is, the paradigmatic menu) of these
> differences in soundings are what the Moscow and Prague
> Circles called "phonology" (as OPPOSED to phonetics), and
> this is the kind of "phoneme" that Vygotsky is really
> talking about.
>
> Still, you can see that it is not what he is talking about
> when he says word meaning, because these units are still
> nowhere near big enough to describe the kinds of changes
> which must occur when verbal thinking develops. I feel the
> same way about a lot of the examples offered of
> "perezhivanie", including Marc's. If MacDuff's grief
> or Carla's epiphany about the misbehavior of her kids
> being due to "outside influences" really is the unit of
> personality and experience that Vygotsky wants us to use
> when we analyse the ontogenesis of personality, then it is
> no more appropriate than using the morpho-phoneme to
> analyse the whole of verbal thinking. Just as evolution
> (of species) requires very different units from history
> (of classes), development, whether we are talking about
> verbal thinking or the personality as a whole, is going to
> require very different units from learning, whether we are
> talking about MacDuff or Carla. The units must be able to
> develop; that is, the relationship of the elements within
> them must be susceptible to many changes over time.
>
> Let me give three examples of how this happens
> in different "perezhivanie". They are not mine; they are
> Vygotsky's, and they are all from the Pedological Lectures.
>
> First, the Crisis at One. Neither the biological nor the
> social endowment of the child greatly changes in the
> acquisition of speech; nevertheless, the relationship
> between the personality and the environment, of which
> both personality moments and environmental ones are
> constituent elements, is entirely transformed. Here we are
> not talking about phonemes, or even morpho-phonemes: we
> are talking about "wordings"--whole utterances. In
> Melbourne I presented some data that demonstrated this
> beautifully--a child's first word is actually an attempt
> to imitate a whole conversation.
>
> Second, the Crisis at Three. Vygotsky spends a lot of time
> discussing the "Seven Stars"--the symptoms of the
> "Terrible Twos" and "Threenagehood" noted by harried
> parents everywhere. But by the end of his analysis it's
> clear that what really happens is a new relationship
> between wish and will: in extreme cases, the child
> actually wishes for one thing (e.g. compromise) and
> wills the opposite (the everlasting "No!"). Again, neither
> the personality moments as such nor the environmental ones
> change, but there is a separation and a sorting which
> allows the subordination of wish to will that we see in
> play. This isn't the kind of "aha" moment that Marc is
> offering us at all: Vygotsky actually calls it the
> "antipode" of future will, because instead of enabling
> will it actually paralyzes it. But it is indubitably a key
> moment in the development of the relation of personality
> to environmental moments that we see in "perizhivanie".
>
> Thirdly, the Crisis at Seven. I think Gonzalez Rey makes a
> total hash of this, and I get very cross when I read his
> article. It is not true that the essence of perizhivanie
> remained a mystery to Vygotsky simply because he no longer
> subscribes to "the aesthetic reaction" and "catharsis" and
> other notions that he toyed with in Psych of Art (he's no
> longer doing experiments on changes in breathing rate when
> people read the works of Bunin either!). It might be true
> that he never offered a system of facts and methodological
> procedures for perezivanie, but that was only because one
> already existed, for example in the work of Wallon and
> Stern and others. It is demonstrably not true that when
> Vygotsky says that the speech environment of those around
> him does not change when the child learns to talk at one,
> he is not "profoundly contradictory with the concept of
> sense": when you read the quotation in context, it is very
> clear that what he is referring to are the kinds of
> absolute indicators used by Zalkind: how often the parents
> read the newspapers, the dialect they speak, and their
> educational background. These do not change, and if the
> child wants to make sense, these are the factors the child
> will have to relate to.
>
> Vygotsky gives the example of a child who is severely
> retarded. The child wants to play with other children and
> is rejected. The child walks down the street and the other
> children follow, laughing. The child is shrieked at,
> insulted, but as soon as the humiliation stops, the child
> is perfectly happy with himself. Vygotsky points out that
> the child is not able to "co-generalize" the
> "perizhivanie" of the humiliations: each is unpleasant,
> but they are entirely separate and cannot be connected
> with any internal sense of inferiority. A normal child,
> however, is able to "internalize" these humiliations and
> consequently develops a sense of inferiority. We can see
> that what has happened is the insertion of what Vygotsky
> calls an "intellectual" moment: an inner layer, which is
> what distinguishes later Chaplin movies from earlier ones
> (again, Vygotsky's example, not mine!) and what brings
> about the "loss of directness and naivete" that we see in
> pre-schoolers.
>
> I think that the reason people find "perizhivanie" so hard
> to work with is the same reason that they find "word
> meaning" hard to work with: it develops. The feeling of
> drinking milk as the infant drinks it is perizhivanie, and
> the thought of being humiliated when you are mulling it
> over and contemplating revenge is also perizhivanie, and
> only a profound analysis which includes ontogenetic
> development and not just learning will show the inner link
> between them. It's for that reason that I think that
> "activity" is not a useful unit of analysis and I am much
> more inclined to use your word "project", so long as it
> can include what Vygotsky calls "inner activeness".
>
> Vygotsky says:
>
>
> Когда я размышляю, припоминаю и т. д., я имею дело с
> внутренней активностью, эта внутренняя деятельность
> психологических процессов непосредственно не связана с
> внешней деятельностью. Вот эта новая форма внутренней
> активности в школьном возрасте заключается в том, что, в
> то время как в дошкольном возрасте эти внутренние
> деятельности обнаруживают непосредственную связь с
> действием, внешней активностью, в школьном возрасте мы
> имеем относительно самостоятельно возникающие,
> относительно независимые внутренние активности по
> отношению к внешней деятельности. Это уже ребенок, который
> может размышлять, в то время когда он делает или видит
> что-нибудь, тот, у которого возникает дифференциация
> внешней и внутренней деятельности.
>
> When I think, remember, etc. I am dealing withinner
> activeness; this psychological process of inner activity
> is not directly linked to any external activity. The new
> form of inner activeness in the School Age consists of
> this: that while during the preschool years these inner
> activities demonstrated an immediate link with action,
> with external activeness, in the school years we have a
> relative autonomy which emerges, inner activeness which is
> relatively independent of external activities. Here is
> already a child who can think, at the same time when he is
> doing or seeing something, one in whom has emerged a
> differentiation of inner and outer activities.
>
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 10:07 AM, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
> David: "Are words really units?"
>
> Well, firstly, "units" is a *relative* term. That is,
> the question is: are words units of something, some
> complex process subject to analysis. And which?
>
> Secondly, according to Vygotsky, "no." The concept
> Vygotsky proposes as a unit is "word meaning" which he
> says is a unity of sound and meaning. The sound is an
> artefact, which, detached from its meaningful
> utterance in a transactional context is just a thing,
> viz., a word. Whereas "word meaning" is an
> arrtefact-mediated action, a unit of human social
> activity.
>
> It is true that words can be countable or mass
> according to context, but I wasn't talking about words
> was I? I was talking about word meaning.
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>
>
> On 8/01/2017 7:59 AM, David Kellogg wrote:
>
> Are words really units? When we look at their
> ideational meaning (that is,
> their logical and experiential content--their
> capacity for representing and
> linking together human experiences) they seem to
> fall into two very
> different categories: lexical words like
> "perezhivanie" or "sense" or
> "personality" of "individual" and grammatical
> words like "of", or "might",
> or "is". The lexical words seem to behave like
> units--they are bounded,
> discrete, and, as Andy would say, "countable" (the
> problem is that almost
> all nouns are both countable and uncountable
> depending on the context you
> put them in, so this distinction is really not as
> essential as Andy seems
> to assume). But the more grammatical words seem to
> be elements of some
> larger unit, which we can call wording.
>
> Veresov and Fleer come up against this problem
> with "edintsvo" and
> "edintsa". Of course, as they say, the two words
> are distinct. But this
> doesn't necessarily mean that the former always
> corresponds to "unity" in
> English and the latter is always "unit". If you
> look at the paragraph they
> translate on 330, you can see that Vygotsky starts
> with an idea that is
> quite "synoptic" and is well expressed by "unit".
> But in the last sentence
> there is a sense that "perezhivanie" is a
> meta-stable unit--one that
> remains self-similar only through a process of
> thorough change, like a
> bicycle whose every part is replaced--and in
> English is it is better to
> express this idea with "unity". The problem is
> that the differences between
> "edintsvo" and "edintsva" in Russian is a matter
> of gender (I think) and
> not simply abstractness, and as a result the
> English version, which cannot
> use the resource of gender,has to rely on
> abstractness, so the words
> "unity" and "unit" are somewhat more distinct and
> less linked than
> "edintsvo" and "edintsva".
>
> There are other problems that are similar. When
> Gonzalez Rey uses the word
> "final moment" to refer to the final period of
> Vygotsky's thinking, he
> leaves the anglophone reader the impression that
> he is referring to
> Vygotsky's deathbed thoughts. On the other hand,
> when Veresov and Fleer use
> "factor" to translate the same Russian word that
> Gonzalez Rey is using,
> they are giving us something more quantitative
> than Vygotsky intended, and
> their translation of "dalee nerazloshim'im
> chastyami etava edinstva"
> into "vital and further indivisible part of the
> whole" is quite opaque in
> English (notice that here Veresov and Fleer use
> "whole" to translate
> "edinstva" rather than "unit"!) At some point you
> have to accept that you
> can change Russian words into English words as if
> you were exchanging
> rubles for dollars, but you still won't be able to
> buy a samovar at Walmart.
>
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 5:21 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil
> <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no <mailto:a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>>
> wrote:
>
> Larry, all,
>
> our arguments in the 2014 address a science
> education literature in which
> the constructivist perspective is the leading
> perspective; We note that the
> assertion that people learn from experience is
> everywhere taken for granted
> but nowhere accounted for. We resort to
> pragmatist and phenomenological
> literature along with Vygotsky's insights to
> point out the need to account
> for learning as something that cannot be the
> result of an individual's
> construction; in experience there is always
> something in excess of what you
> intended, and this is a basic feature of
> doing, of performing. I take that
> to be your "trans" in the trans/zhivanie word,
> Larry, which already is
> denoted in the word PERezhivanie.
>
> But I do not wish to move our discussion too
> far away from Marc's paper
> and the Perezhivanie special issue. We also
> risk disengaging many that have
> not have the privilege we've had to have the
> time to read so many articles
> in just few days into the new year. I think we
> are a point in the
> discussion where a pretty clear point of
> agreement/disagreement, and
> therefore of possibility for growth, has been
> reached with regard to the
> view of perezhivanie as "an experience" and as
> the "working over it". I
> think that to allow as many as possible to
> follow, and hopefully also
> engage, I think it will be helpful to bring
> the diverse perspectives and
> theoretical accounts to matter in accounting
> for some actual material. And
> there are a number of cases described in the
> articles, including Marc's
> case of a teacher, as well as everyday facts,
> such as those brought by
> Beth, and in Beth's article...
>
> I take the task for myself too, but Saturday
> morning need to attend to
> other things!
> A
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
> on behalf of lpscholar2@gmail.com
> <mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>
> <lpscholar2@gmail.com
> <mailto:lpscholar2@gmail.com>>
> Sent: 07 January 2017 18:26
> To: Andy Blunden; Peter Smagorinsky; eXtended
> Mind, Culture, Activity;
> Larry Purss
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Happy New Year and
> Perezhivanie!
>
> Andy, Peter, i hope the intention to move
> beyond politeness to struggle
> with this topic materializes.
> In this vein i want to introduce exploration
> of the ‘excess’ of actual
> over intended meaning as he sketched his
> introduction to ‘experience’.
>
> Citing Dewey, Alfredo says that this excess of
> actual learning over
> intended learning INCLUDES what Dewey refers
> to as ‘attitudes’ and these
> ‘attitudes’ are FUNDAMENTALLY what count in
> the future.
> Alfredo and Roth then add this summary
> statement :
>
> There is therefore, a need to theorize
> experience in terms that do not
> assume control and rationality as the sine qua
> non of learning. It also
> implies a need to develop analytical accounts
> that retain the ‘uncertainty’
> that is an ‘integral part’ of human experience.
>
> Where are Alfredo and Roth leading us with
> this sketch of experience? To
> highlight ‘attitudes’ that occur in the excess
> of actual over intended
> learning? The word ‘attitudes’ generates
> images of (atmosphere) and (moods)
> that ‘flow’ like cascading waterfalls that can
> be imaged as (force) or as
> (receptive). Attitudes that flow to places
> where they are received within a
> certain attitude of care and concern. Not as
> forceful an image as moving
> only with control and rationality.
> Describing ‘weaker’ thought that
> remains uncertain but that also opens us to
> the other’s peril and plight.
> Possibly a post-analytic motion that exceeds
> the intended by living-through
> the actual that develops ‘attitudes’ that are
> fundamentally what count for
> the future.
>
>
> Sent from my Windows 10 phone
>
> From: Andy Blunden
> Sent: January 7, 2017 5:00 AM
> To: Peter Smagorinsky; eXtended Mind, Culture,
> Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Happy New Year and
> Perezhivanie!
>
> OK Peter, what you say is all very true I am
> sure, but it
> entails conflating activity and action (as
> mass nouns) and
> context and mediation, and makes the required
> distinction
> much like one could find multiple meanings for
> the word
> "and" by listing the different phrases and
> clauses which can
> be linked by "and."
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy
> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>
>
> On 7/01/2017 11:42 PM, Peter Smagorinsky wrote:
>
> Let me try to illustrate.
>
> Reading as mediated action: The
> cultural-historical
> context of reading mediates how one’s
> attention and
> response are channeled in socially
> constructed ways. So,
> in one setting, say at home or reading in
> the company of
> friends, a novel might bring a reader to
> tears, or invite
> readers to share personal stories that
> parallel those of
> the plot lines, or laugh out loud. But
> another setting, a
> formal school or university class, would
> have historical
> values and practices that mute emotional
> and personal
> responses, and promote a more sober,
> analytic way of
> reading and talking that fits with
> specific historical
> critical conventions and genres, and
> discourages others.
>
> Reading as mediating action: The act of
> reading can be
> transformational. In reading about an
> talking about a
> character’s actions, a reader might
> reconsider a value
> system, become more sympathetic to real
> people who
> resemble oppressed characters, etc. In
> other words,
> reading a text may serve a mediational
> process in which
> textual ideas and exemplars enable a
> reader to think
> differently.
>
> *From:*Andy Blunden
> [mailto:ablunden@mira.net
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>]
> *Sent:* Saturday, January 7, 2017 6:28 AM
> *To:* Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu
> <mailto:smago@uga.edu>>; eXtended Mind,
> Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
> *Subject:* Re: [Xmca-l] Re: Happy New Year
> and Perezhivanie!
>
> Can you explain in a paragraph or two,.
> Peter, rather than
> asking us all to read 10,000 words to
> extract an answer?
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy
> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>
>
>
> On 7/01/2017 11:23 PM, Peter Smagorinsky
> wrote:
>
> Andy and others, I tried to work out
> the mediated/mediating question
>
> in the area of reading....see if this helps.
>
> Smagorinsky, P., & O'Donnell-Allen,
> C. (1998). Reading as mediated
>
> and mediating action: Composing meaning for
> literature through multimedia
> interpretive texts. Reading Research
> Quarterly, 33, 198-226. Available
> athttp://www.petersmagorinsky.net/About/PDF/RRQ/RRQ1998.pdf
> <http://www.petersmagorinsky.net/About/PDF/RRQ/RRQ1998.pdf>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:From%3Axmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
> [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@>
>
> mailman.ucsd.edu <http://mailman.ucsd.edu>] On
> Behalf Of Andy Blunden
>
> Sent: Friday, January 6, 2017 7:12 PM
>
> To:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:To%3Axmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> <mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Happy New Year
> and Perezhivanie!
>
> I have never understood this supposed
> distinction, Alfredo, between
>
> "mediated activity" and "mediating activity"
> given that all activity is
> mediated and all activity mediates.
>
> Also, could you spell out what you
> mean by the "tension"
>
> between perezhivanie as meaning and
> perezhivanie as struggle.
>
> Andy
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Andy Blunden
>
> http://home.mira.net/~andy
> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
>
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-
> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective->
>
> decision-making
>
> On 5/01/2017 6:26 PM, Alfredo Jornet
> Gil wrote:
>
> Thanks Marc for your careful
> response.
>
> I am familiar to Vygotsky's
> notion of cultural mediation and I
>
> am aware and acknowledge that it was
> elaborated as a means to overcome
> dualism, and that it is not analog to a
> computational approach.
>
> When I brought the computing
> analogy, I did so with regard not
>
> to the concept of cultural mediation in
> general, but to the way it can be
> (and is) deployed analytically. I react to
> what it seems to me a dichotomy
> between a "meaning" as something that is
> static (thereby a form of
> "representation" or reflection of the relation
> with the environment instead
> ofrefraction) and the
> experiencing-as-struggling, which is described
> astransformation or change. If so, mediation
> here would seem to be part of
> a methodological device that first dissects "a
> type of meaning" from "a
> type of activity" (or a given state from the
> process that changes that
> state), and then unites it by adding the term
> "mediation." And this may be
> my misreading, but in that (mis)reading (which
> perhaps is mostly due to the
> fact that in your empirical illustration only
> the initial and end product,
> i.e., perezhivanie, are described, but not the
> experiencing-as-struggle,
> that is, the moving between the two),
> mediation here seems to do as
> analytical concept precisely what you were
> afraid our monism was doing:
> explaining nothing. Only the end products but
> not the process of producing
> perezhivanie are revealed. This may be
> problematic if one attends to what
> Veresov argues in the paper I shared
> yesterday, where he defends the notion
> of mediation but also specifies that Vygotsky
> speaks of *mediating
> activity* (as opposed to *mediated* activity).
> That is, not mediation by
> signs as products, but mediating activity as
> the activity of producing
> signs (which again is an activity of producing
> social relations, perhaps
> what you refer as "holistic meanings"?). What
> do you think?
>
> I did not think you were trying
> to deny the influence of
>
> Spinoza, and I do not think we ever said that
> Perezhivanie was primarily a
> move from Cartesian Dualism to Monism, as you
> suggest in your post. I copy
> and paste from my prior post: "The fact is
> that Vygotsky was building a
> theory on the unity of the affect and the
> intellect that was to be grounded
> on Spinoza, and what we try to do is to
> explore how perezhivanie, as a
> concept being developed during the same period
> (but not finalised or
> totally settled!), could be seen from the
> perspective of the Spinozist
> Vygotsky."
>
> I totally believe that bringing
> the distinction between
>
> perezhivanie as meaning, and perezhivanie as
> struggle, is totally relevant,
> and Beth Ferholt's vignettes of Where the Wild
> Things Are do indeed
> illustrate this. We really need to address
> this tension, which as Beth's
> examples and as our own everyday experience
> shows, is a tension that
> matters not just to books and to theories but
> to living persons (children,
> teachers), a tension that moreover is present
> and mentioned in all the
> articles of the symposium. The papers offer
> different proposals, and I
> think is so great we have the chance to
> discuss them! I too, as you, am
> very interesting in hearing others about the
> questions you had concerning
> sense and meaning.
>
> Alfredo
>
> From:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:From%3Axmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
>
> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
>
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
> on behalf of Marc
>
> Clarà
>
> <marc.clara@gmail.com
> <mailto:marc.clara@gmail.com>>
> <mailto:marc.clara@gmail.com
> <mailto:marc.clara@gmail.com>>
>
> Sent: 04 January 2017 22:31
>
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Happy New
> Year and Perezhivanie!
>
> Thank you very much, Alfredo, for
> sharing this excellent paper by
>
> Veresov, and thanks also for your
> responses, which really helped
>
> me to
>
> better understand your points. My
> main doubt about your proposal
>
> was/is caused by the statement
> that the idea of cultural
>
> mediation/mediator implies a
> cartesian dualism. This shocks me
>
> because, to me, the idea of
> cultural mediation is absolutely
>
> crucial
>
> (in fact, the keystone) for the
> construction of a monist (and
>
> scientific) psychology that does
> not forget mind –that is, a
>
> cultural
>
> psychology. From your response,
> however, I realized that we may
>
> be
>
> approaching the idea of mediation
> in different ways. I talk of
>
> mediation and mediators in a
> quite restricted way. The starting
>
> point
>
> of my understanding of mediation
> is a dialectical relationship
>
> (organic, transactional) between
> the subject and the world
>
> (Vygotsky departs from the scheme
> stimulus-response, from reflexology).
>
> This relationship, that Vygotsky
> calls primitive psychological
>
> functions, would be basically
> biological. However, in human
>
> beings
>
> this relationship is mediated by
> cultural means: signs and
>
> tools; or
>
> primary, secondary and terciary
> artifacts. These cultural means
>
> reorganize the primitive
> functions (dialectic S-O relationship),
>
> which
>
> become then higher psychological
> functions (S-M-O) (see for
>
> example,
>
> The problem of the cultural
> development of the child, in The
>
> Vygotsky
>
> Reader). Now, the subject, the
> cultural mediators, and the
>
> object form
>
> an inseparable dialectical unit,
> so that the subject acts on
>
> (transforms) the object through
> the prism of the cultural
>
> mediators,
>
> the object acts on (transforms)
> the subject also through the
>
> prism of
>
> the cultural mediators, and the
> cultural means are themselves
>
> also
>
> transformed as a consequence of
> their mediation in this
>
> continuous
>
> dynamic dialectical tension.
> Here, for me, it is important the
>
> idea
>
> that the cultural means are as
> material (if we assume a
>
> materialist
>
> monism) as all the rest of the
> world; in fact, are parts of the
>
> material world which become signs
> or tools (and can be therefore
>
> socially distributed). This
> permits the introduction of the
>
> scientific
>
> study of mind-consciousness (as
> mediating systems of signs),
>
> because
>
> mind is not anymore something
> immaterial and unobservable, but
>
> it is
>
> as material and observable as the
> rest of the natural world. It
>
> is
>
> from this view that, for me, the
> idea of cultural mediation is
>
> the
>
> keystone of a monist psychology
> that includes mind. Thus, when I
>
> speak
>
> of mediators, I refer to the
> cultural means which mediate in the
>
> S-O
>
> dialectics; I am especially
> interested in signs/secondary
>
> artifacts.
>
> Here, it is perhaps necessary to
> insist that when I talk of
>
> studying
>
> mediators (and their semantic
> structure), this doesn't mean that
>
> they
>
> are taken out from the activity
> (the flux of live) in which they
>
> mediate (since out of activity
> they are not signs anymore);
>
> here, I
>
> think Vygotsky tries again to
> overcome another old dichotomy, the
>
> functionalism-structuralism one.
> I hope that all this makes also
>
> clear the difference between this view and
> that of computational
> psychologies (which in general are profoundly
> and explicitly dualist and
> not dialectic).
>
> Back to perezhivanie, I'm not
> obviously trying to deny the
>
> influence
>
> of Spinoza on Vygotsky's thinking
> (this is explicit in Vygotsky's
>
> writings, especially in “The
> teaching about emotions”, in the
>
> Vol.6 of
>
> the Collected Works). But I have
> doubts that Vygotsky's
>
> introduction
>
> of the concept of perezhivanie is
> to be regarded primarily as a
>
> movement towards monism (from a
> previous cartesian dualism), and
>
> that
>
> this movement questions the
> concept of cultural mediation.
>
> Instead,
>
> and I think that this is in line
> with some of González-Rey
>
> observations in his paper, my
> impression is that the
>
> introduction of
>
> the concept of perezhivanie
> responds more to a movement (a
>
> further
>
> step) towards holism (something
> that, in my understanding, can
>
> also be
>
> found in Spinoza). Thus, I think
> that the word meaning is still
>
> the
>
> unit of analysis in the last
> Vygotsky -and therefore, the idea of
>
> cultural mediation is still
> crucial (in fact, in The problem of
>
> the
>
> environment, he connects the
> concept of perezhivanie, which has
>
> just
>
> introduced, to the development of
> word meaning [p.345-346, also
>
> cited
>
> in my paper]). However, in my
> view, in the last Vygotsky the
>
> focus is
>
> not anymore primarily on the
> word-meaning as formed for things
>
> (or
>
> collections of things, as in the
> ontogenetic research with
>
> Sakharov), but the focus is now in the
> formation of meaning for holistic
> situations.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Marc.
>
> 2017-01-03 19:16 GMT+01:00
> Alfredo Jornet Gil<
>
> a.j.gil@iped.uio.no
> <mailto:a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>>
> <mailto:a.j.gil@iped.uio.no
> <mailto:a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>>:
>
> Hi Marc, all,
>
> thanks for joining and for
> your interesting work, which I
>
> follow
>
> since I became aware of it. I
> appreciate the way in your
>
> paper you
>
> show careful and honest
> attention to the texts of the authors
>
> involved, but perhaps most of
> all I appreciate that the
>
> paper makes
>
> the transformational
> dimension related to struggle and change
>
> salient, a dimension all
> papers deemed central to
>
> perezhivanie. And I
>
> have learned more about
> Vasilyuk by reading your paper. But
>
> I also
>
> see that we have approached
> the question of perezhivanie
>
> differently
>
> and I think that addressing
> the questions that you raise
>
> concerning
>
> our article may be a good way
> to both respond and discuss
>
> your paper.
>
> I am aware that our use of
> the term monism may be
>
> problematic to
>
> some, and N. Veresov, who has
> recently written about this
>
> (see
>
> attached article), warns
> against the dangers of simply
>
> moving from
>
> dualism into an
> undifferentiating monism that relativizes
>
> everything,
>
> making development
> un-studiable. This seems to be the way in
>
> which
>
> you have understood our
> argument, and of course this is not
>
> what we are or want to be doing.
>
> Probably many will think that
> *dialectical materialism*
>
> rather than
>
> monism is the proper term,
> and I could agree with them; we
>
> do in fact
>
> use dialectical materialism
> there and elsewhere. Yet, we
>
> wanted to
>
> emphasise the Spinozist
> influence (an influence that also
>
> runs
>
> through Marx) and so we found
> it appropriate to use the term
>
> monism,
>
> a term that Vygotsky uses
> before arguing that Spinoza
>
> "develops an essentially materialistic view"
>
> (Collected Works, Vol. 6, p.
> 124). For us, the aim is
>
> working out
>
> ways to empirically examine
> and formulate problems in ways
>
> that do
>
> not reify a mind-body dualism.
>
> Although overcoming dualism
> is foundational to the CHAT
>
> paradigm, I
>
> would however not say that
> Vygotsky did get to solve all of
>
> the
>
> problems that Cartesian
> dualism had created for psychology,
>
> even
>
> though he recognised those
> problems brilliantly as early as
>
> in the
>
> "Crisis". It should suffice
> to cite Vygotsky's own remarks,
>
> which we quote in the paper (and which A.N.
>
> Leont'ev mentions in the
> introduction to the collected
>
> works), where
>
> Vygotsky explicitly critiques
> some of his own prior ideas
>
> for failing
>
> to overcome dualism. We agree
> with those who, like F. G.
>
> Rey, see
>
> Vygotsky's project as a
> developing rather than as a
>
> finalised one.
>
> The fact is that Vygotsky was
> building a theory on the unity
>
> of the
>
> affect and the intellect that
> was to be grounded on Spinoza,
>
> and what
>
> we try to do is to explore
> how perezhivanie, as a concept
>
> being
>
> developed during the same
> period (but not finalised or
>
> totally
>
> settled!), could be seen from
> the perspective of the
>
> Spinozist Vygotsky.
>
> As you note, in our article
> we argue that, if one takes the
>
> Spinozist
>
> one-substance approach,
> classical concepts used in
>
> non-classical
>
> psychology, at least in the
> way they are commonly used in
>
> the current
>
> literature, should be
> revised. One such concept is
>
> mediation. And I
>
> personally do not have much
> of a problem when mediation is
>
> used to
>
> denote the fundamental fact
> that every thing exists always
>
> through
>
> *another*, never in and of
> itself. But I do think that it is
>
> problematic to identify
> MEDIATORS, such as "a meaning", as a
>
> means to
>
> account for or explain
> developmental processes and learning
>
> events,
>
> precisely because it is
> there, at least in my view, that
>
> dualism creeps in.
>
> For example, I find it
> paradoxical that you are concerned
>
> that our
>
> monist approach risks turning
> perezhivanie into a useless
>
> category
>
> because it may be used to
> explain everything and nothing,
>
> and yet you
>
> do not seem to have a problem
> using the term mediation to
>
> account for
>
> the transformation of
> perezhivanie without clearly
>
> elaborating on how
>
> mediation does change
> anything or what it looks like as a
>
> real
>
> process. How is it different
> saying that a perezhivanie
>
> mediates the
>
> experiencing-as-struggle from
> simply saying that it
>
> "affects" or
>
> "determines" it? Indeed, if
> perezhivanie mediates
>
> experiencing-as-struggle,
> does not experiencing-as-struglgle
>
> too
>
> mediate perezhivanie? And do
> not both may be said to mediate
>
> development, or development mediate them? Is
> not this explaining everything
> and nothing?
>
> I do believe you can argue
> that there is a difference between
>
> mediation and classical
> psychology's cause-effect relations,
>
> but to
>
> show this you need to dig
> into the dialectical underpinnings
>
> of the
>
> theory. In your paper, you
> offer a nice analysis of a lovely
>
> case of
>
> a teacher who, in dealing
> with a challenge with one of her
>
> students,
>
> changes her perezhivanie. I
> think you can rightly argue that
>
> there is
>
> a semiotic transformation,
> and I fully support your
>
> statement that by
>
> studying discourse we can
> empirically approach questions of
>
> psychological development.
> The contradictions you show as
>
> being
>
> involved and resolved
> resonate really well with what I
>
> experience as
>
> a parent or as a teacher in
> the classroom. Yet, without
>
> unpacking
>
> what this "mediation" taking
> place between one perezhivanie
>
> and the
>
> next one means as a concrete
> and real, the same analysis
>
> could be done taking an information processing
> approach:
>
> there is an situation that is
> processed (represented?) in
>
> one way,
>
> which then leads to a
> (cognitive) dissonance, and then there
>
> is a
>
> cognitive resolution by means
> of which the situation is
>
> presented
>
> differently in consciousness
> (indeed, when seen in this way,
>
> the term
>
> perezhivanie and the term
> "representation" become almost
>
> indistinguishable). How is
> mediation, as an analytical
>
> concept,
>
> helping here? And most
> importantly to the question of
>
> perezhivanie,
>
> how is this analysis going to
> show the internal connection
>
> between
>
> intellect and affect that
> Vygotsky formulates as
>
> constitutive of the notion of perezhivanie?
>
> I believe that the key lies
> in understanding what Vygotsky
>
> means when
>
> he says that perezhivanie is
> a unit of analysis. I will not
>
> repeat
>
> here what already is written
> in at least a couple of the
>
> articles in
>
> the special issue (Blunden,
> ours), that is the difference
>
> between
>
> analysis by elements and unit
> analysis (Vygotsky 1987). A
>
> unit
>
> analysis approach is
> consistent with Spinoza, for whom
>
> cause-effect
>
> explanations were not
> adequate, requiring instead an
>
> understanding of
>
> self-development,
> perezhivanie as a kernel cell for the
>
> development
>
> of personality. And I think
> you may be after this in your
>
> article in
>
> suggesting a form of
> continuous movement from perezhivanie to
>
> experiencing-as-struggle. But
> perhaps the major difficulty I
>
> find is that, in positing Vygotsky's
> perezhivanie as "a type of meaning"
>
> and Vasilyuk's perezhivanie
> (or experiencing-as-struggle) as
>
> a "type
>
> of activity," it is difficult
> not to see here a division
>
> between
>
> product and process, a
> division that then is analytically
>
> bridged by
>
> the addition of a third term,
> mediation, that should bring
>
> back the
>
> real movement between the
> product and the process.
>
> A different approach involves
> considering the concrete
>
> extension of
>
> actual living and lived
> social relations, and look at them as
>
> generative phenomena. What is
> there in the encounter between
>
> Carla
>
> and the child that leads to
> change? For it is not inside the
>
> mind,
>
> but in real life, in
> consciousness as the real relation
>
> between people, that Carla is changed.
>
> How is the semantic structure
> that you nicely present and
>
> attribute
>
> to Carla a product of the
> social relation between her and
>
> the child?
>
> I think that to rightfully
> situate perezhivanie as a concept
>
> in a
>
> Vygotskian framework, we
> ought to address its relation to
>
> the genetic
>
> law of development.
>
> There is much more to
> disentangle, but this is long enough.
>
> I hope I
>
> have succeeded in making
> clear these ideas. Thanks so much
>
> for
>
> engaging in the discussion!
>
> Alfredo
>
>
> ________________________________________
>
> From:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:From%3Axmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
>
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
>
>
> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
>
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
> on behalf of Marc
>
> Clarà
>
> <marc.clara@gmail.com
> <mailto:marc.clara@gmail.com>>
> <mailto:marc.clara@gmail.com
> <mailto:marc.clara@gmail.com>>
>
> Sent: 02 January 2017 22:14
>
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture,
> Activity
>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Happy
> New Year and Perezhivanie!
>
> Hi, all, and thank you so
> much, Alfredo, for your kind
>
> invitation to
>
> participate in this
> discussion. My paper in the MCA special
>
> issue
>
> focuses on a distinction
> between a type of activity, which I
>
> argue
>
> that is what Vasilyuk called
> *perezhivanie* (experiencing)
>
> and a type
>
> of semiotic mediator, which I
> argue that is what Vygotsky,
>
> in The
>
> Problem of the Environment,
> called *perezhivanie.* I argue,
>
> following
>
> Vasilyuk, that in
> experiencing activities (Vasilyuk's
>
> perezhivanie),
>
> this type of mediator is
> profoundly transformed – in fact,
>
> that
>
> experiencing activities
> consist of the semiotic
>
> transformation of this type of mediator.
>
> As Veresov and Fleer argue in
> their commentary, perezhivanie
>
> (as a
>
> type of
>
> mediator) is for me a
> psychological phenomenon, one which is
>
> of
>
> course conceptualized from a
> specific theoretical framework.
>
> But the
>
> phenomenon is also visible
> from other theoretical frameworks
>
> as well,
>
> as I mention in the paper.
> This phenomenon is my main
>
> interest, and
>
> it is from this interest that
> I arrived at the concept of
>
> perezhivanie (not the other way around).
>
> Now, the phenomenon is that
> at least emotion, reasoning, and
>
> volition
>
> (formation of conscious
> purposes) seem to be decisively
>
> mediated by
>
> holistic situational meaning.
> My current research concern is
>
> trying
>
> to find ways to study and
> understand how this mediation
>
> occurs and
>
> how these semiotic mediators
> are transformed and
>
> distributed. From
>
> this view, I think that
> experiencing activities (Vasilyuk's
>
> perezhivanie) may provide a
> good terrain to study these
>
> issues
>
> (especially regarding the
> mediation of emotion), as I tried
>
> to exemplify in the paper.
>
> Studying semiotic mediation,
> however, is of course not easy.
>
> Following Vygotsky, I assume
> that extended discourse is the
>
> manifestation of thinking
> within certain psychological
>
> conditions
>
> (Vygotsky's Thinking and
> Speech, chapter 7), and I also
>
> assume the
>
> Vygotsky's law of the unity
> of the structure and function of
>
> thinking
>
> (Vygotsky's Thinking and
> Speech, chapter 6). From these two
>
> assumptions, I propose that
> meaning (and its functions in
>
> human
>
> activity) can be
> scientifically studied by structurally
>
> analyzing the
>
> narratives generated by
> subjects, considering that the
>
> discourse
>
> produced in the narrative is
> the point of departure of this
>
> study,
>
> but that considerable
> analytical work must be done to move
>
> from this
>
> discourse to the full
> characterization of meaning. It is in
>
> that
>
> point where I find useful the
> work developed by Greimas, the
>
> usefulness of which I only suggest in the paper.
>
> >From this background, I
> found many interesting ideas and
>
> questions
>
> in the
>
> other papers of the special
> issue. In this first post I will
>
> propose
>
> two of them for possible
> discussion. The first one was
>
> raised by
>
> González-Rey, when he
> introduces, in connection with
>
> perezhivanie,
>
> the concepts of personality,
> and especially, of sense. So,
>
> which is
>
> the conceptual (and-or
>
> phenomenal) relation between
> perezhivanie and sense?
>
> González-Rey
>
> suggests that both concepts
> are somewhat similar (and
>
> overcome by the
>
> concept of “subjective
> sense”); my opinion, partly expressed
>
> in my
>
> commentary, is that
> perezhivanie is a type of meaning, which
>
> includes
>
> different levels of depth,
> and that sense corresponds to the
>
> deepest
>
> level of meaning (which can
> be characterized as a system of
>
> semic
>
> oppositions). Therefore,
> sense wouldn't be in opposition to
>
> meaning
>
> (as “a microcosm of human
> consciousness”, as Kozulin
>
> remembers in his
>
> commentary), although it
> would be in opposition to
>
> manifested meaning (the surface level of meaning).
>
> The second issue was raised
> by Roth and Jornet, and I think
>
> it goes
>
> beyond the issue of
> perezhivanie itself. If I understand
>
> them well,
>
> they argue that Vygotsky's
> core proposal of cultural
>
> mediation is
>
> influenced by the Cartesian
> dualism (mind-matter), and that a
>
> promising approach to
> Cultural Psychology would be a
>
> Spinozist
>
> monism. I am actually very
> interested on the issue of which
>
> epistemological position can
> best substantiate the
>
> construction of a
>
> cultural psychology, and
> that's why I feel inclined to take
>
> the
>
> opportunity to ask for your
> opinions about that. About the
>
> proposal
>
> of Roth and Jornet, I have
> some doubts. First, I don't see
>
> why
>
> Vygotsky's proposals can be
> seen as dualist (in the
>
> Cartesian sense)
>
> -I suspect that it is because
> of the analytical
>
> distinctions?.
>
> Anyway, in my understanding,
> Vygotsky explicitly assumes a
>
> materialist monism (for
> example in The Crisis), and in fact
>
> he constructs his proposal on mediation upon
> reflexology, which also
> explicitly assumed a materialist monism (e.g.
>
> Sechenov). Would a Spinozist
> monism be a better point of
>
> departure? I
>
> don't know, in my
> understanding it is a more idealist
>
> monism, and I
>
> don't clearly see what could
> be gained. In my opinion, a
>
> scientific
>
> psychology which includes the
> study of mind is only possible
>
> if any
>
> type of monism is assumed.
> However, in my view, for a
>
> scientific
>
> psychology, the ontological
> nature of the world is perhaps
>
> less
>
> important (it is an issue for
> metaphysics?), and I am
>
> inclined to assume a neutral monism (e.g.
> Russell).
>
> So from this view, a
> materialist monism and a Spinozist
>
> monism
>
> wouldn't be so different, so
> from both views it could be
>
> assumed that
>
> all is of the same nature and
> all is similarly knowable
>
> (including
>
> mind) [which is the
> ontological nature of the world and to
>
> what
>
> degree it is knowable are
> issues that can be left to
>
> philosophy].
>
> However, in my opinion, this
> does not mean that, while
>
> assuming a
>
> monism, analytical
> distinctions cannot be done when studying
>
> the
>
> world. In that sense, I had
> the impression that Roth and
>
> Jornet
>
> tended to dilute analytical
> distinctions in the name of
>
> monism; I
>
> repeat that I don't know if I
> understood them well, but if
>
> this was
>
> the case, in my opinion,
> analysis would be impossible within
>
> the new
>
> psychology suggested by Roth
> and Jornet, and, regarding
>
> perezhivanie,
>
> there would be the danger,
> noted by Vygotsky in The Crisis
>
> and
>
> cautioned by Kozulin in his
> commentary, that by meaning
>
> everything, perezhivanie ends by meaning nothing.
>
> Best regards and happy new year,
>
> Marc.
>
> 2017-01-02 9:12 GMT+01:00
> Alfredo Jornet Gil<
>
> a.j.gil@iped.uio.no
> <mailto:a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>>
> <mailto:a.j.gil@iped.uio.no
> <mailto:a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>>:
>
> Dear all,
>
> I would like to join
> David, Luisa, Ana, Henry and the
>
> others to wish
>
> you all a Happy New Year!
> May it be full of joy, peace,
>
> and opportunity.
>
> I also would like to
> begin the year announcing our first
>
> ?MCA
>
> article discussion,
> ?although in fact corresponds to the
>
> last issue
>
> of the year
>
> we
>
> just passed, Issue 4 on
> Perezhivanie. This is a very
>
> special
>
> *special* issue, not only
> because its topic has raised
>
> lots of
>
> interest lately in
>
> the
>
> CHAT community but also
> because, greatly coordinated by
>
> Andy Blunden
>
> and the rest of the
> editorial team, the issue takes the
>
> form of a
>
> symposium where authors
> get the chance to present and
>
> respond to
>
> each others' ideas on the
> subject. In my view, this
>
> allows having a
>
> rich and
>
> multidimensional
>
> approach to a subject as
> important as perezhivanie.
>
> Following with the
> dialogical spirit in which the
>
> special issue was
>
> assembled, we will focus
> on one lead article, but hoping
>
> to also
>
> engage ideas and insights
> present in or relevant to other
>
> contributions in the
> issue. ?Marc Clarà's "Vygotsky and
>
> Vasilyuk on
>
> Perezhivanie: Two Notions
> and One Word" will be our
>
> focus. The
>
> article very nicely
> engages the lead work of Vygotsky,
>
> but also the
>
> less known ??(?in
> educational literature) but totally
>
> relevant works
>
> of psychologist ?F.
> Vasilyuk and semiotician
>
> A.
>
> J. Greimas, mobilising a
> number of key concepts
>
> including those of
>
> semiotic
>
> mediation and transformation.
>
> ?In addition to Marc, who
> will soon join us, I have
>
> encouraged some
>
> of
>
> the
>
> other authors in the
> special issue to also join as
>
> "relevant
>
> others," if time and
> circumstances allow them. Let's
>
> hope that this
>
> will help keeping the
> symposium spirit up.
>
> Marc's article is
> attached to this e-mail and will be
>
> made open
>
> access at the T&F pages
> as soon as people is back from
>
> the holidays.
>
> The T&F link
>
> is
>
> this:
>
> http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039
> <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039>.
>
> 2016.1186194
>
> The link to the MCA Forum
> pages, where we announce our
>
> discussions
>
> and other xmca things, is
> here:http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/
>
> I wish us all a very
> productive and interesting
>
> discussion.
>
> Alfredo
>
>
>
>
>
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