[Xmca-l] Re: The word and the concept in the history of science

[David Kellogg]

Andy:

I think the real problem in "Vygotsky's concept of internalization" is not
so much in "internalization" (because of course Vygotsky does use
"interiorization", "ingrowing", and explicitly defines "internal" as being
"psychological"). The real problem is in "Vygotsky's". For example:

Всякая высшая психическая функция необходимо проходит через внешнюю стадию
развития, потому что функция является первоначально социальной. Это—центр
всей проблемы внутреннего и внешнего поведения. Многие авторы
давно уже указывали на проблему интериоризации, перенесения поведения
внутрь.

"Every higher psychic function necessarily proceeds through an outer stage
of development, because the function is primordially a social one. This:
the centre of the problem of inner and outer behavior. Many authors have
long pointed out the problem of interiorization, the passing of behavior to
the inside." (Russian CW 144-145, see English CW 105).

Vygotsky goes on to cite two: Kretschmer and Buhler.

The funny thing, which Mike pointed out to me a few months ago, is that
Vygotsky's own term is вращивания ("vraschivaniya") which is today used to
refer to the kind of hair transplant operation that the US President has
made infamous. These did not exist in Vygotsky's time but the term Vygotsky
used existed--and in fact you can find it in Dal's dictionary, which is
the Russian equivalent of Samuel Johnson's in English or the Kangxi
Dictionary in Chinese.

So the term has been creatively translated as "rooting", "revolution" (much
favored by Maoists), "turning inward", "conversion"--often in one and the
same text (e.g. HDHMF). There's really no mystery about how Vygotsky
himself would have translated it into English, because "The Problem of the
Cultural Development of the Child" (see Vygotsky Reader, pp. 57-72) was
published in English in his own lifetime, and he undoubtedly proofed the
galleys, becuase there's a sentence which includes his translation
"ingrowing" which does not appear in the Russian original, and it's not the
sort of thing you would let a proofreader add. The mystery is in how the
meaning of "ingrowing" changes as it grows into Vygotsky's theory.

dk



David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New in *Early Years*, co-authored with Fang Li:

When three fives are thirty-five: Vygotsky in a Hallidayan idiom … and
maths in the grandmother tongue

Some free e-prints available at:

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/7I8zYW3qkEqNBA66XAwS/full



On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 11:42 AM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:

> I have been in an exchange on Twitter which began with someone claiming
> that it was wrong to refer to "Vygotsky's concept of internalisation." My
> response has been to point to (https://www.marxists.org/
> archive/vygotsky/works/1931/higher-mental-functions.htm#genetic-law) and
> following paragraphs. We confirmed that in the original Russian the words
> "internalisation" or "internalise" do not appear, but phrases like "from
> external to internal" abound. The conclusion therefore is that LSV did have
> a concept of "internalisation" but never put a word to it.
>
> I compared this to the situation with "Marx's concept of commodification"
> which has a clear basis in (https://www.marxists.org/
> archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007) the *Communist
> Manifesto* and (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/
> ch01.htm) *Capital*, but in fact the word "commodification" never
> appeared in English until a Maoist group in the US used it in 1970.  (It
> still isn't recognised by Spellcheck).
>
> So here we have two important cases where the word was coined long after
> the concept was formulated in detail by a creator. "Internalisation" is a
> concept that had been around at least since (https://www.marxists.org/
> reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/locke.htm) Locke, but there is no
> doubt that it is meaningful to talk of *Vygotsky's* concept of
> "internalisation"; likewise, Marx did not invent the idea of making
> something into a trade-able commodity,  but it is certainly justified to
> talk of *Marx's* concept of "commodification."
>
> On the other hand. *perezhivanie* was a word in psychological theory
> before Vygotsky, and LSV himself used the word in multiple senses, so I
> think we have consensus on this list that it is not legitimate to refer
> without qualification to "Vygotsky's concept of *perezhivanie"* because
> the reference of such a term is entirely unclear and requires explanation.
> It is *not* a general rule that the word is coined after the concept is
> formulated. In the psychology of concept creation I think word-making and
> concept-making are intimately tied together; very often old words are
> redeployed, modified or joined, and clearly play a part in concept
> formulation. Tolstoy's aphorism cited by Vygotsky: "The word is almost
> always ready when the concept is ready," (https://www.marxists.org/
> archive/vygotsky/works/words/ch06.htm) is only in reference to children's
> conceptual development and is not quite relevant here.
>
> I have crticised interlocutors of "dogmatism" for insisting that it is
> wrong to refer to "Vygotsky's concept of internalisation." The above
> observations are what I would call "further information" for someone
> unaware that Vygotsky did not have the word, rather than a contradiction.
>
> Questions: Am I correct in what I have said, and can people think of other
> examples like internalisation and commodification?
>
> Continuing the previous topic I raised, could I coin the word "alienism"
> as the cultural analogue of "anachronism"?
>
> Andy
> --
> ------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>
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