This seems to me to be an interesting extension of the general
notion of 'semiotic doubling': that our meaning-world consists at
any moment both of things and the meanings we assign to things,
both of perceptions and conceptions, both of the 'real' and the
'imaginary'. It is this double vision which is the basis of our
account of complex, semiotically mediated activity (in
development, in species differences of primates from most other
mammals, of humans from other primates, etc.)
The usual view is limited to the present: to what is imagined to
be present, meanings assigned in and to present activity and
artifacts, etc. But conceptions and imaginations, being (in the
terminology of linguistics semantics) "irrealis", they apply as
much to what we call the 'future' as what we call the
'imaginary', and so they can be 'imagined futures' at the same
time that they are 'present idealizations'. Not all imagination,
of course, is idealization. Imagined matters have value-loadings
as do all semiotic constructions, but idealizations have
_consistent_ maximally positive loadings on such values as
desirability, importance, and obligation: all those which extend
to the 'irrealis', and excluding those which apply (I think) only
to the 'realis' (such as truth, probability, usuality). Thus
idealizations, while a small fraction of all possible meanings
about something, represent a 'niche' in semantic space which is
likely to be an 'attractor' of our meaning-making. Given an
apprehension (implicit, unconscious) of the dimensions of the
meaning system, we are likely to produce idealizations.
We produce these, reasonably, initially in dialogue, as part of
the process of learning the system of possible meanings and the
way in which our community defines value-loadings (what's good,
what's bad across a variety of specific cases). My sense is that
El'konin's work then posits two developments of these ideas: (1)
their function in childhood and adolescence, and (2) the means by
which they are created. In the matter of function, that they
allow us to act in ways which direct our development toward
ideals which may not actually exist, and with which therefore we
cannot directly interact in a ZPD or in activity generally. They
are purely imaginary 'objects', but function to orient activity
just as material objects may do from earlier in development. I
think this is a very important way to think about these aspects
of development. In the matter of 'creation', however, there seems
to be an assumption (perhaps I am wrong) that these idealizations
must be _provided to_ the child; whereas my semiotic analysis
seems to suggest that the child will very readily construct
idealizations out of the material of social-interactional life.
We could consider, perhaps, that established cultural
idealizations serve to help catalyze the child's own processes of
formulation of idealizations. Obviously they also work to bias
the child's construction of ideals more narrowly than the
inherent limits of the culture's general value-system would
allow. What ideals do we _not_ produce because we become socially
and affectively attached to prior community ideals? How do we
learn to critique such ideals? How do we contribute to the
processes by which such ideals change?
In this darktime of the solstice, when we seek to banish the
darkness with our optimistic lights, I suppose I am remembering
that even 'ideals' must have their dark side and trying to
understand how it arises and what light may be there for us to
discover which casts this shadow. It is surely true that
idealizations are cultural formations characteristic of
communities, and that they are partially reproduced by serving
the sort of function as described in the development of each next
generation. But they are necessarily limiting as well as
empowering when seen against the background of the full meaning-
potential of the community's semiotic resources and its value
premises. I hope such a 'balanced' view may help us gain even
more insight using the very exciting model El'konin and others
are developing. JAY.
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JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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