[Xmca-l] Re: new book of possible interest to Vygotskian people

[Peter Smagorinsky]

I got this info from Rene, who was alarmed at the price. For those who just hit the lottery: $379.00 USD

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2018 2:35 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: new book of possible interest to Vygotskian people

It sure looks interesting, but you neglected to tell us the price, Peter.
mike

On Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 11:31 AM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:

>
> Vygotsky’s Notebooks: A Selection
> Еkaterina Zavershneva, Rene van der Veer, Editors Springer, 2018
>
> Contents
> 1 A Tragicomedy of Strivings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . 1
> 2 Jewry and World History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . 11
> 3 The Book of Fragments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . 21
> 4 The Jewish Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
> 5 Genres of Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
> 6 The Trip to London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . . 57
> 7 From the Zakharino Hospital. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . 71
> 8 Toward Cultural–Historical Theory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . 107
> 9 The Instrumental Method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . 115
> 10 Concepts and the Systemic Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . 129
> 11 The Anomalous Development of the Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . 155
> 12 From the EDI Clinic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
> 13 Spinoza and the Problem of Higher Emotions . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . 209
> 14 Observing Asya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
> 15 The Study of Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . 243
> 16 From Sign to Meaning and Sense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . 251
> 17 The Problem of Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . 271
> 18 The Semic Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
> 19 The Result of Many Years of Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . 311
> 20 Disintegration and Schizophrenia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . 319
> 21 Thinking and Speech. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
> 22 Psychology as a Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . . 367
> 23 Dubious Moves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
> 24 The Conference of October 27–29, 1933 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . 391
> 25 The Semantic Field: Sparring with Lewin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . 403
> 26 Neuropsychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
> 27 Difficult Children. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
> 28 The Playing Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
> 29 The Rest is Silence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
> Author Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
> Subject Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> Preface
> It is ironic that Lev Vygotsky, who claimed for many years that mental 
> development is about the internalization of external signs and that 
> external signs must be replaced by inner ones during the course of 
> such development, made notes throughout his life. It seems he was 
> always making notes on whatever was at hand (e.g., cards, maps, pieces 
> of paper, forms) and whatever he was doing (e.g., visiting museums, 
> attending lectures, reading books, examining patients).
> Subsequently,
> these notes formed the basis of lectures, articles, and books. This 
> book contains a selection of these notes found in Vygotsky’s personal 
> archive. They were meticulously studied and deciphered by the first 
> editor and, in cases of doubt, by both editors. The second editor 
> provided a first translation of the text, and together the editors 
> tried to solve the remaining linguistic and conceptual problems.
> Elsewhere one of us has argued that the fact that Vygotsky became 
> popular long after his death causes problems for the modern reader 
> (Van der Veer 2014, p. 4). We know so little of the psychology of the 
> early 20th century that it is easy to attribute ideas to Vygotsky that 
> were common at the time or fail to see the novelty of the ideas he 
> advanced. In the words of Boring (1950, p. ix):
> “Without
> such knowledge he [the reader] sees the present in distorted 
> perspective, he mistakes old facts and old views for new, and he 
> remains unable to evaluate the significance of new movements and 
> methods.” This is why the editors have supplied introductions and what 
> may seem an excessive number of notes to the text. It is their hope 
> that these will allow the reader to at least partially reconstruct the 
> historical context of Vygotsky’s ideas. In writing these introductions 
> and notes, they relied on the usual encyclopedias (notably, 
> Wikipedia), read scores of articles and books by Vygotsky and his 
> contemporaries, and were especially pleased with the existence of 
> digitalized older books. The editors were also morally supported by 
> colleagues and friends (e.g., Tatyana Akhutina, Igor Arievitch, Irina 
> Kazakova, Peter Keiler, Alexandre Métraux, Maksim Osipov, Yakov 
> Sinichkin, Natal’ya Stoyukhina, Anton Yasnitsky) and felt free to 
> bother them with silly or difficult questions. In rare cases, they 
> believed they knew something themselves.
> The result
> of this effort is what Vygotsky regarded as typical for the modern 
> Western
> person:
> borrowed knowledge, e.g., knowledge that is transmitted from expert to 
> novice.
> Few readers have been in the Sahara; yet most of them believe it is a 
> hot and sandy place in the daytime.
> Even with the introductions and the footnotes, this volume requires 
> some hard work by the reader, and the editors do not claim that they 
> fully understand each and every part of the text. After all, a large 
> part of this text was written for private use, and arguments were not 
> spelled out. Moreover, sometimes is not even clear whether Vygotsky 
> gives his own point of view or summarizes the view of a colleague.
> Hopefully, discussions of this volume in the scientific press and on 
> the Internet will help to solve the remaining problems of 
> comprehension.
> The publication of private notebooks always involves some 
> modifications, and we wish to explain the procedure we followed. 
> First, the text was deciphered and typed. This in itself is no easy 
> task because Vygotsky’s handwriting was not always clear, and he 
> frequently used abbreviations of his own invention (e.g., “m.r.” for 
> “mental retardation” or “hndwrtng” for “handwriting”). One might say 
> that his notebooks have several of the properties that Vygotsky 
> himself ascribed to inner
> speech: abbreviations, references to things that are only clear to 
> someone who has the same knowledge (e.g., “See my talk”), etc. In 
> typing the text of the notebooks, we lost the typical typographical 
> features of a manuscript, that is, the underlining, the crossing out, 
> the arrows, the writing upside down or backwards, the added remarks in 
> the margins, and so on. Rendering these features in the book would 
> have made it very unpleasant to read, but in the comments we have 
> indicated what readers cannot see for themselves. In addition, we have 
> corrected the mistakes in foreign words, expressions, citations, and 
> names. Although Vygotsky read several languages, his active use of 
> them left much to be desired. Words underlined by Vygotsky, book and 
> journal titles, poetry lines, and foreign words are rendered in 
> italics. In the rare cases that Vygotsky himself used English words or 
> expressions, these are given in bold script. Punctuation has been 
> mostly left intact—unless this made the understanding difficult—and we 
> added quotation marks when Vygotsky was citing a poet or writer 
> verbatim. Vygotsky was in the habit of repeatedly writing up the 
> outlines of the same talk or chapter and had a stock of pet 
> expressions and ideas to which he came back time and again, as the 
> reader will see in the present edition. For this reason, in rare 
> cases, we left out part of the text when it became excessively 
> repetitive. These suppressed passages have been indicated with angle 
> brackets and ellipses. Insertions and comments by the editors are 
> given in square brackets (i.e., [ ]) and/or small script. Words that 
> were difficult or impossible to decipher are given in angle brackets 
> (i.e., < >) with either our best guess or the word “illegible.”
> Finally, this book was edited by two authors who have never met each 
> other and communicated solely through email. There is no doubt that 
> this caused some disadvantages— e.g., written speech needs to be much 
> more elaborate than oral speech —and it is better not to speculate 
> about the possible advantages. However, we sincerely believe that the 
> present result once more shows the truth of Feuerbach’s dictum, that 
> what is impossible for one person is possible for two.
> Moscow, Russia Еkaterina Zavershneva
> Leiden, The Netherlands René van der Veer References Boring, E. G. 
> (1950). A history of experimental psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 
> Prentice Hall.
> Van der Veer, R. (2014). Lev Vygotsky. London: Bloomsbury.
>