Dot, thank you for your thoughts. There is such a wonderful and natural
personal flavor to them. There is also this amazing congruence in what you
write about and how you write about it. I feel that your thoughts come as a
reflection of some very wholistic experiences and hence they are also truly
'wholistic' - a feature that you seem to value and espouse in so many ways.
Yet, at the same time, it also makes it so much more difficult to answer...
because so many issues are raised AT ONCE.
Let me at least try to address some of your thoughts. I know I will only
touch upon some peripheral ones, but they constitute the context without
which it is hard, I believe, to get to more substantive issues.
I might be completely wrong, and please correct me, but it appears to me
that Dot's perception of AT entails the idea that it has to be taken in
contradistinction to Vygotsky's theory. These two theories seem to be
thought of not only as different but as opposite ones. Just as an example,
what I wrote in my attempt to spell out few things about how to understand
understanding as an activity (I'll come back to this later), Dot perceived
as related ONLY and exclusively to AT, and in her perception of my logic,
consequently NOT to Vygotsky. As if saying something about Leont'ev
automatically has to become opposite if applied to Vygotsky. My point was
general about theories and concepts (I took example of L simply because we
are in the discussion of AT right now) and yet was perceived as me drawing
an opposition between Vyg. and Leont'ev.
However, from all I know as someone who studied and worked at the Moscow
University - the hotbead of AT - from mid-1970-ties and into early
1990-ties, there has been hardly anyone who would put AT and Vygotsky into
opposition. The general discourse in these years was about THE CONCEPTION OF
VYGOTSKY-LEONT'EV-LURIA in this specific sequence. This is how things were
presented to the students and in hundreds of publications by Leont'ev and
Luria (thank you, Vera, for reminding of his importance) and by many many
other immediate followers and colleagues, importantly, by Galperin and
Davydov - perhaps the two most brilliant of them. There has never been a
wall placed between Vygotsky and Leontjev and the emphasis was on general
premises and assumptions of this school of thought. Volumes have been
written on what are these premises and assumptions. This does not mean that
no distinctions have been made, they were, and this is reflected, again, in
so many works...(I don't want to bombard you with names). The bulk of these
works has been written in 60-ties, 70-and early 80-ties. So called rounds of
discussions (all published) on AT have taken place in these years reflecting
real arguments and disagreements among the Vygotsky's followers who
nevertheless saw themselves as representatives of the same school...
Interesting in this respect is that Brushlinskij, Lomov and others from
outside this school criticized Vygotsky AND Leontjev AND Luria (and the
whole school) for much the same things, primarily, for too much emphases on
social to the neglect of internal (in their terminology) individual
processes (see Peter Jone's eloquent message on Rubinstein and Leont'ev. By
the way, there was one typo in that message, Peter: Point 6 about 'analyses
through synthesis' relates to R, not L).
Why bothering about all this? Because the context is important, as we all
agree. And also because this illustrates yet another issue: did people
'lived AT' like catholics, without challenging or criticizing it? Dot,
please excuse me, but this is a misunderstanding, as this is in such a
contradiction with so many published discussions and critiques and
conferences (not to mention my own personal experiences) that reflected real
struggle and fights and disagreements WITHIN AT. If some in Moscow say that
'they lived with AT' - or rather 'V-L-L approach' - there are so many
meanings in here. You took this to mean that there was a blind, un-reflected
acceptance of AT on their parts (hence the analogy with catholics, I
guess?). Yet another meaning is that yes, indeed, AT was an important part
of their lives in the sense of engagement but also challenge. AT was taken
very seriously (but not uncritically) as most people believed they were
engaged in developing foundations for a NEW (objective or marxist or
materialist) psychology and many devoted their whole lives to this goal.
Hence emotions were so high and fights were so common. And criticism so
stinging - like example you gave citing Radzikhovskij and I could give many
many more.
So, what was it on the whole? I think, the life and dynamics of
Vygotsky-Leontjev-Luria school of thought were quite representative of what
a development of any school in science might be - the life full of struggle
and contradictions, mutual respect and disagreements, devotion and doubts
(perhaps even betrayals), conflicts and challenges, leaps forward and
periods of stagnation. Isn't this the only way any development can possibly
take place?
Anna Stetsenko
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