[Xmca-l] Re: Vale Colin Barker

[David Kellogg]

Colin wrote me once off list, quite out of the blue, about Volosinov, and
we backed and forthed a bit in real time; I found him unusually
well-informed and correspondingly well-disposed, a combination that is,
alas, not that common in people who feel strongly about what they are
saying. But I was a little curious about the apparent urgency concerning
questions that had laid dormant since the 1930s. At the end of the exchange
he thanked me profusely, because his wife was undergoing emergency surgery
and he had to keep his brain occupied elsewhere. I thought a bit about that
when I was waiting for my own partner to come out of cancer surgery.

Years later I learned that he was part of a group of founding members of
the Socialist Workers Party who had resigned out of principle. A senior SWP
cadre had apparently raped a comrade and the party investigation had
whitewashed him, so somebody had leaked the affair to the Guardian and been
disciplined for it. I was speaking at a conference organized by SWP
supporters in Korea, and asked his advice, and again found him
large-spirited, generous, but with some kind of steel reinforcement bar
where most of us just carry a backbone.

Though far flung as Beijing and Hainan, or heaven and earth
Those who can understand us are always right next door

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article;

 David Kellogg (2019) THE STORYTELLER’S TALE: VYGOTSKY’S ‘VRASHCHIVANIYA’,
THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT AND ‘INGROWING’ IN THE WEEKEND STORIES OF
KOREAN CHILDREN, British Journal of Educational Studies, DOI:
10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200
<https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200>


Some e-prints available at:

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/GSS2cTAVAz2jaRdPIkvj/full?target=10.1080/00071005.2019.1569200




On Tue, Feb 5, 2019 at 7:28 PM Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I am very sorry to hear this.  Colin put on a small (50-80 people) but
> very good conference. We attended and participated  twice, maybe three
> times, and found it a wonderful venue for senior academics  to mix with
> graduate students who were making presentations of their own research.  I
> remember presentations from Ireland, Netherlands, Greece, Germany, Norway
> as well as from the UK and the US. The content of these presentations was
> always progressive and international and a little bit “out there". He and
> his wife Ewa would host a big dinner for many of us at their home at the
> end of the conference. He was a generous organizer, a very adept critic and
> teacher, and a good writer.  I remember a very clear critique he made of
> Activity Theory a few years ago.  Something else he wrote was just uploaded
> to Academia the other day; I had not read it yet.
>
> Helena
>
>
> helenaworthen@gmail.com
> phone inVietnam:  +84 0784-483-721
> helena.worthen1
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Feb 5, 2019, at 4:21 PM, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
>
> Apparently, Colin Barker, a member of this list and founder/organiser of
> the annual Manchester Social Movements Conference, died yesterday.
>
> Check his Facebook page for details as they are provided.
>
> Andy
> --
> ------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>
>
>
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