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Re: Re2: [xmca] Vygotsky's Plural Discourse!!
Hi Jussi. I look forward to more of your posts! I too am a much
slower writer and reader than I wish I was. This reminds me of a
story a philosophy professor once told me about himself. He said he
liked a lot of subjects in college and had not yet made up his mind
what he was going to major in. He said he loved reading but was a
slow reader, and was having trouble keeping up with the reading pace
required in the sciences, and in English literature, subjects he very
much enjoyed. He said he read too closely, meticulously, and
therefore slowly, and this became a disadvantage. But he noticed that
there was one field where it was a BIG advantage to read that way.
Philosophy! And so a career was born ...
Cheers,
- Steve
On Feb 3, 2009, at 6:19 PM, Jussi Silvonen wrote:
Hi everybody!
First, I'd like to thank Jonna for introducing my paper and starting
the discussion. I'm sorry about the delay of my comments -
sometimes there is life also outside the academy (luckily not too
often, as you know), which keeps us out of the office for few days.
There are already too many issues in this ongoing and extremely
interesting discussion to comment in one e-mail. So I will simply
start by listing some of the issues mentioned so far. After that I
try to a little bit clarify my motivations and point of view, to
focus the discussion.
Before that, anyhow, I have to make confession. I don't know
Russian and read Vygotsky only in English and in German. I compiled
a bibliography of English translations of LSV's works I know so far
(=102), which shows the textual base of my paper. You can find it on
my site:
http://joyx.joensuu.fi/~jsilvone/papers/Vygo_bibliography.pdf
(I added original dates of LSV's papers in the references and cross-
referenced overlapping versions of translations, hope this could
help those not having the Collected Works in their library).
Comments on the bibliography are welcomed, too. Those reading LSV in
Russia can probably tell, if something (or what) essential sources,
related to my arguments, are missing.
1.
Reading very fast the comments so far, at least following topics or
arguments were represented:
- The question of periods in Vygotsky's work. According to David
there would be almost a consensus about three Vygotskies ( LSV I,
II, III), but this point was questioned. My special contribution to
this debate, however, is not the statement of three periods as such,
but the opinion that Vygotsky was committed to behaviorism in one
moment of his thinking. This point obviously requires more
discussion, as Steve and others remarked.
- The question of the tools by which we should conceptualize the
(possible) periods in LSV. My suggestion was that we could integrate
some ideas / concepts from Althusser and Foucault to our attempt to
understand critically and self-reflective way the development (or
non-development) of our tradition. Some agreed to some degree, but
the idea was strongly criticized, too (at least Andy).
- The problem of semiotics or semiotic mediation in LSV is one of
the key issues in my argumentation, connected to the hypotheses
about epistemological break between LSV II and III. Somebody read my
thesis as a statement about the priority on supremacy of semiosis /
sign mediation. What I actually said, was that Vygotsky always
related different forms of mediation to each other, and that inside
this methodological frame his point of view moved from instrumental
approach to a semiotic one. I agree with most of David's remarks on
this question, but this point requires some clarifications, too.
- In some comments were seen missing contexts in my analysis. No
discussion about Leibnitz, Spinoza, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Kant,
Hegel, Goethe and other key figures in Western philosophy (Andy). I
agree, absolutely. The focus of my paper is in the conceptual
development in Vygotsky's work, not in the history of philosophy.
And the distinction between traditional and non-traditional, or
Cartesian and post-Cartesian comes not from Althusser but is a
common statement in Vygotskyan traditon (classical and non-classical
in Asmolov, Elkonin etc). What I try to do is make sense of this
distinction , to conceptualize it someway. Can we do this without a
reference to the long perspective of philosophy, is a good question,
anyway.
- One other missing context seen in my paper is Vygotsky's relation
to Marxism and dialectical materialism. It is not possible to
understand Vygotsky outside the Marxian frame, is claimed. This
problem is in brackets, just like the philosophy question, but it is
worth to debate. Some people (f.e. Elhammoumi) really see Vygotsky
as a Marxist per excellence, but I think this is a too limited
approach to Vygotsky. He was not a Marxist at all, if we take
Marxism in the form as it exist in Vygotsky's life time. In my
interpretation Vygotsky took a Marxian position, which was
incompatible with the Marxist-Leninist state-ideology of the USSR
This argument requires a discussion about the concept of dialectical
materialism as a methodology, about Marx and Marxism, even about
"the Stalinist machine" and Marxist philosophy. I'm not sure how
many would be interested in this, but I'm ready to go on this, too.
- The concept of CHAT was also touched. Should we talk about CHAT,
or about CH/AT, or even about CHP vs AT? Or maybe CH?AT would
express best way the state of art ?
- The was also the question of the actual history of cultural
historical school in Russia, the developments after Vygotsky's dead
and so on. My paper is focused on texts only, but can read Vygotsky
without understanding of the context of his work? In brackets, I
agree.
- And I could add here for example the inconsistent way I used
Foucault, which nobody, for some strange reasons, mentioned.
I picked up topics above fast without any deep reflection. I guess
any of these topics would be worth of discussion. Before to going
on my own comments, I clarify a little the background and the
motivation of my paper.
2.
It seems to me that some of the comments are based on too fast
reading of my paper, resulting in misunderstanding of what I am
trying to do. My paper is not meant to be an exhaustive description
of all aspects and contexts in LSV's thinking. Many things are
consciously put in brackets to make the problematic I am interested
in, more focused and clear. I am interested in Vygotsky semiotics.
But how I became interested in this topic, then?
One motivation to start a journey through the Collected Works was my
dissatisfaction about the way we express our tradition. Some people
are talking about Socio-cultural research, some others Cultural-
historical psychology. In nowadays Russia they have cultural
psychology debating with activity theory. Other labels can be,
possibly, found out. And then we have the Mike's way to talk about
Cultural-historical-activity theory. I agree with David's evaluation
"that Mike and other founders of CHAT founded it as a loose
federation between two rather incompatible Vygotskies, the Vygotsky
of mediated action and the Vygotsky of word meaning, with the
assumption that a common tradition and a set of common practices
would hold it together." I understand, somehow, the motivation
behind the label CHAT. It can be understood as an umbrella like
construction, as a space for discussion and for practices. What's
the problem, then?
If you take a look at the footnotes of my paper, you can realize I'm
writing in Finnish context. At least in Finland the CHAT tradition
is very strong in empirical investigations, but theoretical
contributions are rare. Especially works on the history of "CHAT"
are missing, and the possible contradictions between the founders of
the tradition are almost taboos. Consequently CHAT is presented as
a coherent theory, in a way which makes discussion about some
methodological problems - semiotic mediation for example - difficult
or even impossible.
When involving in ISCRAT I realized the fragmented state of the
tradition. In Finland we have one coherent conception (CHAT), on the
international plane there are plenty of school and interpretations.
The strange thing was, that everybody seemed to claim to be the real
Vygotskians. After that impression, it was easy to ask the most
simple question: is there something in the founding what could - at
least to some extent - explain the situation. And now I have my
hypothesis: there are not one, but three Vygotskies, giving
possibilities to different theoretical discourses.
If now go back to the CHAT concept, we can see what it problematic
in it. On one hand it is meant to be an umbrella type concept
bringing together different parts of the common tradition. But on
the other hand it is presented as a research theory, as a tool for
empirical research (at least in Finland). We have a common tradition
which prefers the idea of mediation. But the interpretations of the
nature of cultural mediation are incompatible. So it could be
reasonable to talk about cultural-historical approach divided into
different - partly compatible, partly competitive - research
theories, having their own objects and research interests. I will
not continue this discussion about the two levels of methodology. I
simply state that it is impossible to combine semiotic and
instrumental mediation concepts although it is possible to have a
dialogical relation between them. Thus: CH?AT instead of CHAT.
The difference between a tradition (as a form of discoursive praxis)
and a research theory (as a tool) was not clear for me when I
started my project. Anyway, I was sure that by reading Vygotsky (and
Leontyev) from a new angle I could produce some insights explaining
the fragmented situation of CH tradition. To make the moves in
Vygotsky's thinking as visible as possible I concentrated just in
one aspect where the chances are most evident - in the conception of
sign mediation. And I think that the focus of the debate should be
about here - in this question. Of course this problem opens up new
questions and problematics, as have been shown in this discussion,
which are all extremely interesting, too.
3.
Above I have only given a list on some topics touched in the
discussion, and clarified a little bit the background on my
argumentation. There are many important points to comment. I hope I
can do it soon. From practical point of view I can only say, that I
am an extremely slow reader and ever slower writer (that's why I
love Italy, the beautiful country of slow food!). Because of that I
will concentrate on one topic at time: probably first the question
of Vygotsky's behaviorism, after that the question of semiotics and
maybe after that - if the Lord of Research gives me some time - the
Vygotsky Marxism problematic contextualized in the actual history of
cultural historical tradition.
Thanks for everybody for thought provoking and inspiring comments -
it's a great pleasure to read this discussion. Hope it continues....
JusSi
--
Jussi Silvonen
senior researcher, docent
University of Joensuu
Department of Education
P.O. Box 111 (Tulliportinkatu 1)
80101 Joensuu
Finland
-----
jussi.silvonen@joensuu.fi
-----
http://joyx.joensuu.fi/~jsilvone/
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