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Re: [xmca] Vygotsky's Plural Discourse!!



Sorry that I only occasionally get to catch up these days with the stacks of email in my xmca folder.
I was interested to read the paper by Jussi and many of the comments  
on it. I had not realized, having never read LSV in chronological  
order, the nature of the development of his ideas over time.
As to whether these represent 'epistemological breaks', or just a more  
usual to-and-fro of the very sort of dialectical development LSV was  
trying to characterize, I can't quite say. But I do think that  
Foucault's view of such things, and perhaps Althusser's, can be useful  
if we remember that F at least is not talking about changes in how  
someone thinks about or writes about a topic, but rather in the  
emergence in the community of new possibilities and forms of  
discourse: new topics, new questions, new forms of argumentation, new  
grounds for evidencing, new limitations and taboos, etc. One might  
compare this with the perhaps more familiar 'paradigm shift' notion of  
Kuhn. And it would seem to apply to anyone who thinks LSV, or Marx, or  
Freud, were intellectual revolutionaries in this broad sense. So what  
Jussi seems to me to be saying is that LSV participated in the  
beginnings of such a shift as he altered or expanded the possibilities  
for talking about the development of higher mental functions beyond  
the discourse of behaviorism, indeed beyond all possible such  
discourses, to not just his own theory (or Leontiev's, etc.) but to a  
whole new class of possible theories in which development was central,  
development was dialectical in a practical and material-activtiy  
sense, and in which sign mediation and the role of social meaning had  
an articulated and critical role. Perhaps not the best summary (cf.  
the two obituaries Jussi cites), but at about the right level of  
abstraction to make the point about what 'new' or 'revolutionary' means.
Correspondingly, as for Foucault, and maybe Althusser, one does not  
expect the individual theorist or writer to necessarily be aware of  
the larger-scale, longer-term nature of the 'break' or introduction of  
new possibilities for discourse. LSV was of course very conscious of  
the theoretical and philosophical traditions and historical context of  
psychology in his day, but it's still likely quite difficult to see  
these shifts at the time as a historian looking backward from decades  
or a century after LSV would see them. I think today it's widely  
recognized that Darwin introduced new possibilities of discourse about  
the natural world, and indeed new modes of explanation, well beyond  
his own specific theories. But I don't think that was evident at the  
time, either. So for LSV it probably felt like two steps forward, one  
step back. And small or medium sized steps at that. While for Jussi or  
for us, we can see it as building up steam for a big jump.
I was also interested that Jussi identified, and claims that in late  
lectures LSV also identified the biggest shift as that towards  
semantic analysis, semiotics, and meaning. Of course we all find it  
familiar today to see the end of behaviorism in the rise of an  
emphasis on meaning, a historical and cultural change that in some  
ways feels very recent, perhaps not even completely finished yet. And  
Jussi may be influenced by this familiar narrative of our times. But  
it also seems likely that he is right, and that LSV was right if he  
did say this, because of the very natural fit that we seem to have  
found in the last couple decades between CHAT and other semiotically- 
based forms of discourse, such as Bakhtin's dialogism, or  
socioculturally informed methods of discourse and semiotic analysis.  
And I wonder if Jussi isn't rather subtly suggesting that LSV's final  
agenda, left unfinished, is still somewhat unfinished. Because  
integrating the necessary emphasis on practical material activity as  
the context and generator of developmental change (or expansion) with  
the key role of social meaning systems and the individual's  
participation in them, does seem to me to remain incomplete.  
Especially across the wide range of timescales from episodes of  
activity to historical changes in the possibilities for social meaning- 
making.
JAY.

Jay Lemke
Professor
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke




On Jan 29, 2009, at 9:57 AM, kangasoj@mappi.helsinki.fi wrote:

Dear all,

I'd like to start the discussion on Jussi's paper by a couple of words on the heuristic Jussi uses, namely Althusser's idea of 'epistemological breaks' in making a new science. Jussi is using the idea as Foucault used it in Arhaeology of Knowledge - by tracing the epistemic contradictions and transformations in the development of science.
'New scinece starts with concepts borrowed from the old theories,  
and because of this the demarcation line between the old and the new  
science is within the new theory'.
Jussi asks firstly: how does the transition to a non-classical or  
'organic psychology' really occur in Vygostky's thinking. As far as  
I understand, this type of developmental analysis has only been  
possible for a relatively short time for the non-russian speakers  
after the collected works appeared in English.
Jussi identifies three phases: A socio behaviourist phase of young  
Vygotsky, the founding phase of cultural historical psychology and  
the late Vygotsky's work. I think one of the key contributions of  
the paper is how Jussi relates these phases to the 'current disputes  
about the continuity or discontinuity between key figures in the  
Vygotsky school.'
In this note I will not go further into Jussi's actual argument on  
how the contradictions and transformations occurred in Vygotsky's  
thinking - I hope others will soon pick up the thread regarding  
those - but rather I'd like to connect to a personal experience from  
last week: I went to listed to Uffe Juul Jensen speak at the  
Unversity of Helsinki on 'Do we need a new philosophy of medicine?'.  
Uffe started out with a self reflective account on how where he grew  
up and studied, and the shifting intellectual currents around him  
formed who he was and is as a person, and how this is connected with  
how his thinking has evolved. This account reminded me very much of  
Jean Lave's wonderful autobiographical/intellectual history speech  
at ISCAR (in Seth's session where Jean, Uffe  and Ray McDermott all  
gave a talk).
As I read Jussi's paper I realized that the heuristic discontinuous  
change he is using is somehow related to this particular type of  
scholarly (self) reflexivity that is very powerful and liberating. I  
don't really know yet what to make of it, but I recognize it as  
something of vital importance.
best, Jonna



Quoting "Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com>:

Go to http://www.lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/index.html
and read all about it! Jussi's new paper proposed for
discussion is now posted.
mike
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