[Xmca-l] Re: keeping eyes open

[Larry Smolucha]

>From Francine:

To Phillip White and
To: David Kellogg             (who have both graciously replied to my posting)

Interesting thoughts.

Recognizing that creativity always involves an "essential tension" to use T.S. Kuhn's phrase or an irreducible tension (as Wertsch would have it) is a good starting point. Inter-personal conflict and inter-cultural conflicts can be synergistic, resulting in new ideas that are more than the sum of 'individual' parts. Also, conflicting opinions do not have to lead to one side winning over the other - unless that is the real agenda.

In my lived experience, I have dealt with many attempts to stifle Vygotsky's ideas (not just my own ideas). For me, these incidents were object lessons in the process of cultural change. Some other time, I can share some specific examples. The new paper that my husband and I have in press, discusses this 'stifling' of Vygotsky's ideas (without getting personal). The editor asked us to write this paper on Vygotsky as a Pioneer in Psychology knowing full well our perspective - could have asked someone like Yasnitsky or Van der Veer.

I would highly recommend watching an old film Why Man Creates (if you can find it). Saw it for the first time in high school and felt as if I had lived it (never noticing that the title is sexist). Also, recommend Kuhn's book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (about how new ideas challenge old paradigms and seldom get a fair hearing). I was weened (so to speak) on Kuhn's book, having read it at age 20 as a grad student at the University of Chicago (back in 1973). Wrote my Master's thesis on Kuhn's book with Stephen Toulmin as my advisor. Ten years later, I was translating Vygotsky's three papers on the development of creative imagination (that I had stumbled upon myself on the road less traveled).

Seems to me that there are several threads that could be generated from the evolving discourse thus far. Let me suggest a couple,

1) The future XMCA as a more inclusive and welcoming CHAT room.

2) The future of CHAT requires examining the current status of Vygotskian studies and Activity Research. It doesn't matter to me where this leads. I have always marched to the beat of a different drummer, never having become an advocate of either CHAT or Activity Theory (no offense intended).

3) Many members of the list serve feel strongly about current political crises and will want to address that. Since XMCA postings end up on Google searches there is no privacy and professionalism (or lack thereof) is on full display.

4)There might be particular topics of interest directed related to Vygotsky, Activity Theory, etc. A specific topic might only interest a handful of people, but the discussion should be welcoming to all.  People are people, some are gruff, patronizing, and even self-righteous.
Some people want to understand something; while others want to proselytize.
Eventually, you figure out who you are dealing with.











________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of White, Phillip <Phillip.White@ucdenver.edu>
Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2020 1:01 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: keeping eyes open

Francine - i found your posting to be very encouraging, particularly the call for a closer focus on Vygotsky & Activity Theory.

and by that time i finished reading your posting i was reminded of the soviet label of cosmopolitanism - particularly where you imputed a "stifling" of Vygotsky's ideas.  for me that seems far-fetched.

i find it fair to believe that Vygotsky's determination to move away from behaviorism - a bane not just on soviet russian education but on american education as well - and it's prescriptive linear, stage based, black box based assumptions of learning to instead a learning theory based within a social relationship, a community historically grounded and with signs both physical and mental embedded within the situated cultural present, proleptically focused.

this is why i found and still find Vygotsky so pertinent to my life's activity - parent, spouse, grandparent, friend, neighbor, confident, patron - all of the myriad of social relations within a wide range of legitimate peripheral participation - in which xmca is but one.(d)
and this for me of course also involves (d)ecrying colonialism, racism, sexism".  and while for you this "... doesn't address the oppression of free thinking people by members of their own culture, race, and sex", i see it as a start - and not a mere expression of "political grievances".

as for Vygotsky, of course he is going to be a man of his time - and as such blind to certain oppressions endemic to the Soviet Russian socio-political-educational structure at the time.  just as we all are now.

and frankly, i don't think that state of social relations is going to be able to support "free thinking" - that for us, as it was for Vygotsky and, say, Spinosa - an idea which will always rest of the razor's edge of - to use James Wertsch's description - an irreducible tension.

and always xmca is going to be operating with a degrees of irreducible tension.

and i shall consider your question - what do we want to know, explore, contribute.

well, this is my contribution:  many thanks, Francine, for yours.

as Eugene would suggest - half-baked ideas here - what do you think?

phillip
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