[Xmca-l] Re: That on That

[Wolff-Michael Roth]

Alfredo, All

part of the materials were already published in the Journal for Russian and
East European Psychology.

The book undermines attempts to paint a monolithic picture of the person
and his contribution to culture, whose life was as much in flux as ours,
and who, was also very reflective, such as in this note:

The book of all my life, badly written, but its ideas are mine. What is of
the evil
of the day will become obsolete. (I am not writing it at the heights of my
mind but
overwhelmed by the evil of the day. Something will remain for the future.
The seed
are my children and students to whom I would dedicate it if I would value
its
prospects higher. But the past, in whose power I am, is stronger. That is
why
<labor>). (p.214)

It shows us that he was willing to revise what he had done----among which
are many of those things that he continues to be celebrated for, but that
he was abandoning, realizing that they were in part *the evils of the day*.
He disavows what he has done earlier as intellectualist.

I also like this note from the very end

This is the last thing I have done in psychology, and I will die at the
summit like
Moses, having glimpsed the promised land but without setting foot in it.51
Forgive
me, dear creatures. (p.497)

So we should not just look back at what he disavowed but forward to what he
had seen. There are opportunities to take him at his word, being among his
children and students, to step onto that promised land and grow something
from the seeds he left, not worrying too much about the tree stumps that he
burned and left behind.

The notes are the tracks on paper that the activity of this person,
including his thinking, left behind.

Michael






On Tue, Feb 20, 2018 at 12:17 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
wrote:

> David, I do not know about the history of this particular collection, but
> given that it is quite common to find letters and other private documents
> published posthumously, I wonder if there is something particular to this
> edition or if your "embarrassment" relates to this practice in general and
> its ethical implications.
>
> As to how helpful and relevant this collection is to enrich Vygotsky's
> intellectual legacy, I see many of the challenges of presentation of
> disconnected materials that you mention. Yet, having had a rather limited
> look at the book, I did not yet get a sense of this being part of any
> de-Marxization project, as, just as I find remarks that during a time
> Vygotsky seemed to reject Marxist ideas, I also read about "a sudden and
> decisive change ... accepting Marxism, which became one of his main sources
> of inspiration", and the Zakharino Hospital notes (part of which I think
> had been published before in 2012) you can read Vygotsky being quite
> explicit about his marxist methodological project. Also, I (very quickly
> and not at all exhaustively) looked after the citation to Bernfeld, and I
> only could find this citation that referred to a 1911 Hebrew Encyclopedia,
> which leads me to wonder about it rather, than finding it embarrassing, but
> that may be my own ignorance. In any case, I guess the main questions may
> be: is it ethically correct to have this notes published, and are they
> useful at all in moving Vygotsky's legacy further into something good? I am
> just posing the questions, for I don't have a straight answer yet.
>
> Alfredo
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> Sent: 18 February 2018 18:44
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: That on That
>
> To tell you the truth, I am finding the notebooks a little embarrassing.
> First of all, they consist of a number of things that the author probably
> would not have wanted us to read, including high school jottings about the
> Bible and love letters. Secondly, the historical context is presented in a
> rather undifferentiated and ultimately unhelpful way: for example, how
> useful is it to say that when Vygotsky attended gymnasium he became acutely
> conscious of Jewish culture unless we know what kinds of Jewish culture
> were available (e.g. Bundism, left-Zionism, etc.), and how useful is it to
> know that when he was at university he was "ferociously opposed" to Marxism
> unless we know what kinds of Marxism he was exposed to (e.g.
> Freudo-Marxism, or Austro-Marxism, legal Marxism, Menshevism, or
> Bolshevism). When Vygotsky cites S. Bernfeld in his gymnasium writings, he
> can't really mean Siegfried Bernfeld, can he? Siegfried was only four years
> older than Vygotsky! Thirdly, and most embarrassing, I find it strange to
> be discussing jottings of little life like this when huge swathes of
> Vygotsky's most important lifework (e.g. defectology, pedology, and
> psychotechnics) remain unstranslated and undiscussed. I can't help but
> wonder if this isn't part and parcel of the project of rescuing Vygotsky
> from Marxism.
>
>
>
> David Kellogg
>
> Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
> Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
> Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'
>
> Free e-print available (for a short time only) at
>
> http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 18, 2018 at 9:21 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
> wrote:
>
> > I always appreciate David's fascination with the way history, language,
> > and psyche intertwine, which really is a Vygotskian concern.
> > As for the book, and as far as I know, Mike, Beth is already moving
> things
> > to get that book reviewed. I have been reading here and there, and there
> is
> > clearly a challenge in presenting a myriad of single notes—as compared
> to a
> > manuscript that had at least to some extent been composed by the author.
> > The authors do a huge job in putting the notes together by topics, but
> yet
> > it requires a lot of back and forth reading to catch up with Vygotsky's
> > meandering and developing ideas. So endless topics for endless readings
> > indeed!
> > Alfredo
> > ________________________________________
> > From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> > on behalf of mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu>
> > Sent: 17 February 2018 20:18
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: That on That
> >
> > Lots of interesting thoughts in your emails, David. "Essays on a
> > Hallidayan Pedology"
> > perhaps?
> >
> > Have your read the Vygotsky notebooks? They must contain endless topics
> for
> > discussion.
> >
> > mike
> >
> > On Sat, Feb 17, 2018 at 7:32 AM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Consider the following sentence, which was, according to the recent
> > > indictment, sent by a Russian agent posing as an American citizen to
> the
> > > Republican presidential campaign in 2016.
> > >
> > > "We gained a huge lot of followers and decided to somehow help Mr.
> Trump
> > > get elected."
> > >
> > > Of course, many American citizens write like this. But even staunch
> Trump
> > > supporters would find the word order oddly un-American sounding in at
> > least
> > > two places, the noun group "a huge lot" and the verb group"decided to
> > > somehow help". And they would be right. But why?
> > >
> > > The answer is that elements in a noun or a verb group in English have a
> > > certain functional order. We sometimes teach this in very complicated
> > ways,
> > > e.g. "size, color, age, material, function" to explain "big brown
> leather
> > > handbag". But describing the problem is too example-driven: it lacks
> the
> > > generality and generative power of theory: for example, it doesn't
> > account
> > > for quantifiers like "many", "few", "a lot of" or for deictics like
> > "this",
> > > "that", "these", "those", and "the", and it can't explain why things
> have
> > > that order in English. It also won't explain our verb group: it won't
> > tell
> > > us why "to somehow help Mr. Trump get elected" somehow sounds more
> > foreign
> > > than "to boldly go where no man has gone before". Finally, it won't
> tell
> > us
> > > anything about how this order develops in children: what they learn
> first
> > > and what they learn next.
> > >
> > > Vygotsky will explain all this, with a little help from Halliday. In
> > > Chapter Five of Thinking and Speech, he argues that children learn
> > > syncretic "heaps" first ("That on that"). There are three kinds of
> these
> > > (purely syncretic, spatial, and two-stage) but what they all have in
> > common
> > > is that they are "deictic"--the main purpose is "that on that". Then
> > come a
> > > variety of complexes, which include the concrete, objective, "factual"
> > > properties: number, size, shape, etc. Only then do we find concepts,
> and
> > > these too come in two different varieties: everyday and academic. The
> > > everyday are distinguished by modifiers at the same level of generality
> > as
> > > the concept (e.g. "leather handbag"), and the academic are
> distinguished
> > by
> > > conceptual hiearchies that involve different levels of generality (e.g.
> > "a
> > > type of personal accessory").
> > >
> > > In Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar, we learn that groups
> > are
> > > just like clauses. They start with a Theme (an element which is speaker
> > > oriented, the "point of departure" of the speaker) and they end with a
> > > Rheme (an element which is hearer oriented, the place where the speaker
> > > comes in). Like clauses, groups tend to go from me to you, from old to
> > new,
> > > from deictic words to defining ones.That's why we start a noun group
> with
> > > "a", "the", or "some". That's why we continue it with numbers, and then
> > > with descriptors (which go from speaker-oriented-subjective to
> > > hearer-oriented-objective), and that's why scientific "classifiers"
> come
> > > after judgmental epithets. "A huge lot" is functionally misordered,
> > because
> > > it starts with a deictic but then puts in a descriptive before the
> > > numerative (like "little three pigs" or "black four and twenty birds
> > baked
> > > into a pie"). With verb groups, the modifiers can go before or after
> the
> > > verb, but not in the middle: "somehow to help" or "to help somehow".
> But
> > if
> > > we say "to somehow help" it really appears that "somehow" is part of
> the
> > > meaning of the verb itself (as in "to boldly go") and not the means of
> > the
> > > action.
> > >
> > > Halliday explains how they are ordered. But Vygotsky explains why.
> > >
> > > David Kellogg
> > >
> > > Recent Article in *Mind, Culture, and Activity* 24 (4) 'Metaphoric,
> > > Metonymic, Eclectic, or Dialectic? A Commentary on “Neoformation: A
> > > Dialectical Approach to Developmental Change”'
> > >
> > > Free e-print available (for a short time only) at
> > >
> > > http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAWPBtmPM8knMCNg6sS6/full
> > >
> >
>