Re: [xmca] review of Italian translation of Thinking and Speech: In defence of van der Veer and Mecacci

David-- Since the first sections of Mind in Society are taken from a
combination of tool and symbol, and hist of higher psych functions, and
since we can now search T&S electronically thanks to Rene putting it on his
website, you should be able to track down the source of the statement on
method. I am pretty sure it is from history of higher psych functions.

Re Francine's comments. I think there is a lot of value in seeking out ways
to nail down what LSV or any other scholar "really
wrote/said." But I also think that whether or not there are disagreements
(did Leontiev really invent activity theory, did LSV
really change his mind at the end of his life as Francine characterizes
matters?) we are better off trying to figure out what are the
issues that really matter to us and to formulate our ideas as clearly as
possible and to seek ways to put them (and ourselves)
to critical tests that put our cherished ideas in jeapordy. Then, if........
they survive, maybe they are worth something. And, if they
survive, its almost certain someone has thought of them before. Maybe the
people to whom we attrributed them, or maybe their sworn enemies.
mike

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 5:17 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>
wrote:

> It's good to have your textological eagle eye back, Anton. By the way, I
> wrote an article about your defense of Chukovsky which I never managed to
> get published. Are you interested?
>
> Yes, I picked up some of the points you made by reading van der Veer's
> review of the Kozulin translation. Other people on this list have supported
> the criticisms that he made. As you know, I am not a Russophone (I'm working
> on it!) so I really have no independent way of judging.
>
> Kozulin does say that his translation is "based on the 1934 edition" (p.
> lvi) and he even has the title page of the 1934 edition as the title page
> of his book. Curiously, he also adds that the 1934 edition is prepared
> imperfectly by Vygotsky. How does he know, I wonder? (There! THAT'S a
> rhetorical question!)
>
> I see you are also right on Kolbanovsky not disappearing; I THINK I got
> that from Levitin's "One is Not Born a Personality" but I don't have it here
> in Seoul so I can't check. However, there is a similar and very sympathetic
> account of Kolbanovsky's role in getting Thinking and Speech into print in
> 1934 and defending it against the inevitable backlash given in van der Veer
> and Valsiner's own book, "Understanding Vygotsky", pp. 383-384.
>
> About Piaget and Vygotsky, I'm afraid we are in almost complete agreement;
> I know this will come as a terrible disappointment to you, since you like to
> put our disagreements in the sharpest possible light! I too found Susan
> Pass's double hagiography completely unhelpful. However, the evidence
> you cite from Piaget's letters to Luria certainly suggests a correspondence
> in French and consequently unfamiliarity with Vygotsky's writings in Russian
> on the part of Piaget, which is what I was trying to argue.
>
> Do you happen to know anything about this article by Richard Prawat in
> American Educational Research Journal (Fall 2000) about Vygotsky's dinner
> with Dewey? Did you read Gredler's and Shield's criticism of it in American
> Education Research Journal 2003, 40: 177-187?
>
> In some ways, it seems relevant to Chukovsky-Vygotsky, because Prawat's
> main argument is that Vygotsky was essentially the protege of Lunacharsky
> and Krupskaya, both of whom were quite hostile to Chukovsky (according to
> Chukovsky).
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
> PS: Sorry to rattle on like this, but you are the list's
> authoritative textologist (I'm still trying to do something with the stuff
> you uncovered about Belyayev).
>
> Do YOU happen to know where this bit from Mind in Society p. 65 comes from?
>
> "The search for method becomes one of the most important problems of the
> entire enterprise of understanding the uniquely human forms of psychological
> activity. In this case, the method is simultaneously prerequisite and
> product, the tool and the result of the study. (ALL of this is in italics in
> Mind in Society)"
>
> I'm quite SURE it doesn't come from Chapter Two of the History of the
> Development of the Higher Psychological Functions (Vol. 4 of the English
> Collected Works).
>
> The "tool and result" part becomes very important in Holzman and Newman's
> book "Revolutionary Scientist" of course. But it's also the epigraph of a
> recent article in Applied Linguistics, and I'd really like to know the
> context.
>
> dk
>
>
>
>
>
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Received on Fri May 30 17:32 PDT 2008