[Xmca-l] Re: Lucien Sève

[David Kellogg]

Let me just explain who he was for those who, like Ulvi, have heard the
name but don't really know the work.

Lucien Sève was born in Chambery (in the Savoy), part of France on the
border of Italy and Switzerland--it's a good place to ski, but it's also a
good place to study dialectics, because you are not really French or
Italian or Swiss and you are at the same time all of the above. It was also
a great place to resist the Nazis, and he must have seen quite a bit of
that as a teenager. He must have seen even more during his military service
in Algeria just before the beginning of the uprising, because around that
time he joined the Communist Party of France (PCF).

Elected to the PCF Central Committee, he presided over the PCF civil war
between Roger Garaudy (who wanted to dissolve the party into something
liberal and humanistic) and Louis Althusser, who wanted exactly the
opposite. Althusser argued that the "humanist" Marx of the Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts was theoretically and philosophically different
from the anti-humanist scientific socialist who wrote Capital. Lucien
argued that the early Marx was a philosopher and a pessimist with only a
theoretical knowledge of the working class, but the later Marx had direct
experience of workers' organizations and was able, as a result, to transfer
his pessimism squarely to the fate of capitalism. (Parallels with the
present crisis, which rather resembles a general strike, strongly to be
encouraged.)

He knew Leontiev and Luria personally, and as head of the party publishing
house he arranged to print his wife's translation of Leontiev's
personal copy of Thinking and Speech into French. Iintellectually, he
remained a philosopher (he served on Mitterand's scientific ethics
committee for more than a decade). But he also wrote a three volume work on
the theory of the personality, in which Vygotsky has much more than a
cameo. All his life he fought for what he called "refondation" of the
party--in the end, he did succeed in refounding activity theory on the
basis of the semiological work of Jean-Paul Bronckart and Bernard
Schneuwly, amongst others.  (What could be more relevant to CHAT?)

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

Book Review: 'Fees, Beets, and Music: A critical perusal of *Critical
Pedagogy and Marx, Vygotsky and Freire: Phenomenal forms and  educational
action research'  in Mind Culture and Activity*

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1745847

Some free e-prints available at:

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/QBBGIZNKAHPMM4ZVCWVX/full?target=10.1080/10749039.2020.1745847

New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: "L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works
Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"

 https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270

(Parallels with the present strongly encouraged. Looking out my window, I
can amost imagine this to be a general strike and not (as it actually is) a
lockdown/lock out.....)

On Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 8:14 AM Ulvi İçil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com> wrote:

> David,
>
> I knew Lucien Seve's writings, thanks to my French, without  having the
> oportunity to read them, when I've got curious about Vygotsky literature.
> I had the immediate impression that he is an important Marxist
> intellectual.
> Hoping to read his work  in memoriam.
>
> Ulvi
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 at 02:09, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>
>> Oh! What an untimely loss, just when we hoped that the special mca issue
>> on pedology would promote a
>> deeper understanding Vygotsky's project as a unified whole with Seve's
>> discussion as major piece.
>> :-(
>> mike
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 3:59 PM David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> A few days ago I wrote to Lucien to ask him to contribute a blurb for
>>> our new book and uncharacteristically got no reply. With some trepidation I
>>> looked at his Wikipedia page (he is an extremely well known philosopher in
>>> Francophonia). He died of Covid 19 on the 23 of March.
>>>
>>> Professor Seve was a great Marxist and a great militant: he and his wife
>>> did more than anyone else to make the work of Vygotsky known in France and
>>> Switzerland. One of his last writings will be appearing soon in MCA.
>>>
>>> David Kellogg
>>> Sangmyung University
>>>
>>> Book Review: 'Fees, Beets, and Music: A critical perusal of *Critical
>>> Pedagogy and Marx, Vygotsky and Freire: Phenomenal forms and  educational
>>> action research'  in Mind Culture and Activity*
>>>
>>> https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1745847
>>>
>>> Some free e-prints available at:
>>>
>>>
>>> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/QBBGIZNKAHPMM4ZVCWVX/full?target=10.1080/10749039.2020.1745847
>>>
>>> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: "L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works
>>> Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"
>>>
>>>  https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Being a social scientist is like being a geologist who studies rocks in a
>> landslide. Roy D'Andrade
>> ---------------------------------------------------
>> For archival resources relevant to the research of myself and other
>> members of LCHC, visit
>> lchc.ucsd.edu.  For archival materials and a narrative history of the
>> research of LCHC, visit lchcautobio.ucsd.edu.
>>
>>
>>
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