Curious how a more linear-post Moscow line of quotes would give us
something different. Maybe I just see or look for consistency rather than
difference through out his work. There is a lot of interesting work on how
he should be divided methodologically and historically (Veresov for one)
but such analysis seems blurry to me. There seems to be rather consistant
themes running throughout all of his writings across history and
methodology. To say a child is a "reflex apparatus" in Pavlov terminology
is not that much different than to say a child constructs. That "reflex
apparatus" needs a stimulus just as a child who constructs needs a
cultural-social context.
The (1979) quote does not seem totally out of line with his other work.
Egocentric speech turned inward (1987) the infant being entirely socially
mediated (Child Psychology 1998), the zone of proximal development.
Vygotsky saw processes going through development which English does not
handle very well. Hommi Bhabba mentions this in reference to the "third
world" in how we (westerners) turn dynamic processes such as identity
(verbs) into nouns. My point being the confusion probally lies more in our
tendency to view or apply concepts such as the ZPD in stable rather than
dynamic ways. Like your reference to appropriation as a process (dynamic
example) something always in the process of change becoming reified as some
sort of technology.
The red flag being the context in which the quote was chosen, a view of
individual severed from the world, rather than having an active role in the
process. The child hardly sits back in an armchair while social
consciousness is being transformed to individual consciousness. I guess we
could say a fish interacts or has a dialectical relationship with water,
but it just wouldn't make any sense. The interaction/dialectic only makes
sense while the fish is in water, once it leaves it ceases to exist. I
suppose the individual is similar, it is a concept that is dependent on not
seperate from culture or society. Without society-culture there is no
individual not the other way around.
Nate
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Cole <mcole who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 1999 7:06 PM
Subject: sociogensis continued
>
> Thanks Nate, David, et al for the continuing, enlightening, and difficult
> discussion. It is especially helpful, David, that you have put out
> on xmca the page I was pouring over yesterday.
>
> I want to flag a problem. There is dramatic non-linearity in the
> citations of Vygotsky being used by everyone. Here is an example
>
> Thus as Vygotsky
> (1979) himself put it, "the social dimension of
> consciousness is primary in time and in fact.
> The individual dimension of consciousness
> is derivative and secondary" (p. 30).
>
> Vygotsky, 1979, is from the talk that LSV gave in 1924 that got
> Luria all interested in him. It preceeds the articulation of cultural-
> historical psychology.
>
> Nate has been citing the Psychology of Art. A fascinating book. Also
> very early, most of it pre-Moscow. Once upon a time we had a discussion
> of his overall view of base and superstructre in the opening essay which,
> if I recall (its been a while) is out of Plekhanov and has been the
> subject of a ton of criticism.
>
> I am NOT arguing for a "correct interpretation" but I am concerned that
> there is a lot of quote choosing from different phases in Vygotsky's
> thinking which add confusion to an already-difficult interpretive
> task.
>
> more to come
> mike
>