[Xmca-l] Re: keeping eyes open

Sat Nov 28 16:19:04 PST 2020

>From Francine:

Why XMCA ?

For some people, it is still valuable as a resource for information, citations, etc.

Some people, see it as a forum to promote political activism.
Dare I ask - how Anna knows what Vygotsky would have thought of Defund the Police?
or what the basis is for claiming Vygotsky was a political activist in 1917?

For a long time, discussions on XMCA have had little to do with Vygotsky or Activity Theory.
The very esoteric philosophical debates involve a shrinking number of people.

The stifling of discursive inquiry into Vygotsky's writings is not unique to XMCA. It has a long history - discussed in the paper that my husband and I have in press. Decrying colonialism, racism, sexism, doesn't address the oppression of free thinking people by members of their own culture, race, and sex. Was Vygotsky a biased white male heterosexual promoting European colonialism? As a Jew he was discriminated against under the Czarist regime. His writings were banned by Stalin - who was Georgian not ethnic Russian. (Dare I ask - is Stalin a white man?)

As Vygotsky's writings became of interest in the West, there emerged a small group of experts who took it upon themselves to stifle creative exploration of Vygotsky's ideas.
My entire career has consisted of being told by the 'experts' what Vygotsky thought, only to find that the actual texts did not support their interpretations (I was able to read Russian).
Challenging the 'establishment' did not lead to a prestigious academic appointment, but then it didn't for Vygotsky either.

What do the other marginalized members of XMCA want to know, to explore, to contribute?

Or is XMCA just to be hijacked as forum for political grievances?

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Diana Arya <darya@education.ucsb.edu>
Sent: Saturday, November 28, 2020 11:56 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: keeping eyes open

Hello all,

Acknowledging the emergence of multiple threads from the original ("why generations"), I selected this particular thread to build on Antti's encouragement to invite other voices in reimagining the purposes and practices of this listserv. I'm currently working on a manuscript that relates to what we can learn, how we can grow as scholars, when/if we view reality as the known unknown. We need diverse voices/insights/experiences to understand what's happening to whom, for what purposes and under what conditions. James Baldwin is a central voice in my piece; the following excerpt from the 1980 landmark essay Dark Days may be relevant to our discussion:

Every human being born begins to be civilized the moment he or she is born. Since we all arrive here absolutely helpless, with no way of getting a decent meal or of moving from one place to another without human help (and human help exacts a human price), there is no way around that. But this is civilization with a small c. Civilization with a large C is something else again. So is education with a small e different from Education with a large E. In the lowercase, education refers to the relations that actually obtain among human beings. In the uppercase, it refers to power.      –James Baldwin, Dark Days, p.44

Perhaps we can use Baldwin's linguistic marker in making visible the power distinction of R/research practices. I find that the work of philosopher Kristie Dotson on what she calls epistemic oppression is also relevant. Who gets to be the knower, and who is relegated to making mistakes or missing intentions? Obviously power plays a role here.

And now that some time has passed, I want to celebrate Arturo's intrepid engagement with this listserv. We have got to be willing to see HOW (not if) racism is instantiated in our discourse. We have been socialized in a world that values some groups of others, and such inequities seep into our languages, discourses, etc. And academia is not immune to racist ideologies. I believe that the real risk is acknowledging one's blind spots, and learning to see the world as it is.

What do others think?

Best,
D

On Sat, Nov 28, 2020 at 3:33 AM Antti Rajala <ajrajala@gmail.com<mailto:ajrajala@gmail.com>> wrote:
David and all,

In my reading, the issue at stake is that over a long time, many people experience the XMCA list as unwelcoming. Instead of refocusing the issue to something else, I believe we all have a responsibility to recognize it as a problem, carefully listen to these voices and be open to a change in the power dynamics of this list. Zaza, Beth, and others have made a good start in suggesting concrete principles of where to start.

Antti

On Sat, 28 Nov 2020 at 12:56, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com<mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
Zaza--

Dude, I don't really speak Russian either, as Nikolai and Anna will tell you (we only speak English). In my translation work I spend a lot more time on Google Translate than I would like, and that's why I burden the list with the queries you mention from time to time.. But I bet you speak Shona, or at least understand a little.

So maybe you can help. I'm using this tune from the late great Tuku (Oliver Mtukudzi) in a class I am giving on sex education in Korea. I've been told that it doesn't really mention AIDS/HIV explicitly, and I get that--in fact, that's one of the reasons why I think it's useful for making certain parallels between pandemics and also discussing HPV and other issues I want to talk about. But I don't quite understand THIS verse--maybe you can help me?

Zvinorwadza sei kubhinywa newaugere naye
(Kana uinahwo utachiwana)
Zvinorwadza sei kubhinywa neakabvisa pfuma
(Kana uinahwo utachiwana)
Achiziva unahwo hutachiwana
(Kana uinahwo utachiwana)
Ende uchiziva unahwo hutachiwana
(Kana uinahwo utachiwana)

So "Kana uinahwo utachiwana" means something like "If you get infected". But what is the reference to being raped by your roommate?

On the subject of this thread. Like voter fraud, racism is a very serious charge, and the right has successfully made hay out of its seriousness. But as with voter fraud they have made even more hay out of rendering the charge unproveable, by removing its class content and rendering it a purely subjective inclination. This is why, I think (I hope), Arturo and others tend to raise this sort of thing in private off-list material that is so much at variance with their public writings that it fairly attracts the charge of hypocrisy or at least political timidity. After all, if you really suspect your interlocutor of racism, it's incumbent on you to keep your mouth and not just your eyes open. But you've got to put money where your mouth is: you have to provide some evidence (e.g. the paper that Harshad circulated on the list not too long ago). There are important scientific issues we need to discuss which are actually not unrelated to the one that Arturo was reacting to: whether you can accurately judge the language proficiency of a person by their race or national origin (as I have done in the second paragraph above). Not unrelated. But not identical to either, else I would not have written that paragraph.

Here's an example. A dear colleague of mine, who like the vast majority of people in this country is not white and wouldn't know deficit linguistics from a surplus, has just written a paper on why Korean children tend to drop articles (i.e. "a" and "the"). He begins with the Chomskyan premise that all nouns must, according to universal human grammars which are hardwired at birth, be realized by "determiner phrases". What that means is that a noun phrase like "the cat" is not really about a cat--it's about "the", and the "the" is modified by "cat" (What kind of "the-ness" do you mean? The cat kind!)

But it's THIS, and not Vygotskyan, Hallidayan, or Bernsteinian developmentalism, that is deficit linguistics. I won't say it is racist, because unfortunately that term has lost its scientific content and become nothing but a thought crime. But I will say that people who speak languages without articles or languages that emphasize nouns over determiners (e.g. Korean, Chinese, Russian) are not born with a birth defect (or "null spell out", as the Chomskyans say).

Does Shona have articles or not? Do you know?

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY0JssD8Hzc__;!!Mih3wA!VuWlCstk2l9swuW_ofTGpwBjTRzUup-wqLeBxpV4citwQL7L5E_43uPZBLwUyOpRBhXwDw$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY0JssD8Hzc__;!!Mih3wA!QePX9kKiZVk8QmwFWMwYJblxjbu3_Pd2XeZXyOV1YZVr6VOrUaRfbuTZlUpgqPtWWiBSSw$>

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Book with Nikolai Veresov
L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works, Vol. I: The Foundations of Pedology
Translated with Prefatory Notes and Outlines by David Kellogg and Nikolai Veresov
See free downloadable pdf at:

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007*2F978-981-15-0528-7__;JQ!!Mih3wA!VuWlCstk2l9swuW_ofTGpwBjTRzUup-wqLeBxpV4citwQL7L5E_43uPZBLwUyOoCJCBE4A$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007*2F978-981-15-0528-7__;JQ!!Mih3wA!QePX9kKiZVk8QmwFWMwYJblxjbu3_Pd2XeZXyOV1YZVr6VOrUaRfbuTZlUpgqPuZA6tlEA$>

Forthcoming in 2020:
L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works, Vol. II: The Problem of Age.
Translated with Prefatory Notes and Outlines by Nikolai Veresov and David Kellogg

On Sat, Nov 28, 2020 at 6:02 PM Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com<mailto:huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>> wrote:

P.S. To my best understanding (very minimal, no doubt), the subject matter of Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory is the development of human higher psychological functions. (How that is "left," "right," or otherwise is beyond me.)

Political propensities can be discerned across some (adult) developmental stages.

Huw

--
Nothing can be changed until it is faced. (James Baldwin)

Diana J. Arya, PhD
she/her/hers/they/them/theirs
Associate Professor and Graduate Diversity Officer, Education
Faculty Director, McEnroe Reading and Language Arts Clinic
Gevirtz Graduate School of Education
University of California, Santa Barbara
https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.cbleducation.org__;!!Mih3wA!VuWlCstk2l9swuW_ofTGpwBjTRzUup-wqLeBxpV4citwQL7L5E_43uPZBLwUyOrvlLQOMw$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.cbleducation.org__;!!Mih3wA!SWP2ZnqgUqryJOnGljQ0m8RjinrQROanrP4GpZ_iIiLzaHb7yDYK93TPCNTgFzaPiElt7A$>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20201129/070a81d5/attachment.html 