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Re: [xmca] On Marxist and non-Marxist aspects of the cultural-historical psychology of L.S. Vygotsky by Nikolai Veresov
i will try :)
http://tutorialcompiler.com
On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 12:51 AM, <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Vera; i certainly want to give a vote of confidence to your position on
> this. I believe the issue is that there is a strong contingent that does
> not want to give credit to anything being initiated from human
> consciousness. I know Barbara Rogoff is not a member of this listserv but
> she has been drawn into this discussion in the past and I know she is a
> firm believer that nothing is internal but rather appears in the
> collective. Although her research is extremely valuable, I believe it is
> limited to the development of the child and loses explanatory powers when
> it moves into the realm of the adolescent.
> eric
>
>
>
> Vera
> John-Steiner To:
> mcole@weber.ucsd.edu, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
> <vygotsky@unm.ed <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> u> cc:
> Sent by: Subject: Re: [xmca] On
> Marxist and non-Marxist aspects of the
> xmca-bounces@web cultural-historical
> psychology of L.S. Vygotsky by Nikolai Veresov
> er.ucsd.edu
>
>
> 02/24/2009 11:06
> AM
> Please respond
> to "eXtended
> Mind, Culture,
> Activity"
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Hi everybody concerned with "inside" and "outside",
> I am having difficulty in participants' discomfort with this
> distinction. Why can't we have a socially situated and initiated process
> be both
> external to the organism and also "internal"? That is, when a person
> participates in an activity and engages with all that she/he is,
> and has at his/her disposal, that participation is simultaneously
> internal and external.. Clearly our hands change as we engage in labor,
> why can't we accept our brains changing while participating in learning
> and relying on memory? The fact that the brain is enclosed makes is
> less accessible to observation than the hand. But the principle of the
> appropriated consequences of activity which changes different parts of
> the participant refers to a process of interwoven changes not to a
> frozen dichotomy. To me, the very way Vygotsky handles this issue is
> the hallmark of his reliance on dialectics.
> Vera
>
> Mike Cole wrote:
> > You are using XMCA just fine, Ulvi.
> >
> > David-- As usual there is a lot to discuss in your comments. I want to
> pick
> > up on just one where you and I either disagree or talk past each other. I
> > would like exclude the latter possibility so we could hone in on what the
> > disgreement is and what its resolution might be.
> >
> > You write:
> > For Vygotsky the sources of the crisis, like the neoformation itself,
> lies
> > within the child. (Whether Martin likes it or not, that is what he
> says!).
> >
> > What constantly confuses me in such statements is what "within the child"
> > means (and this is probably related to the use of perezhivanie as a unit
> of
> > analysis for the study of ontogenetic development, to echo a prior
> message).
> >
> > The biological development of the pre-frontal cortex is clearly one of
> the
> > systemic changes that is taking place in the years of roughly 5-10 that
> are
> > a part of an important crisis in development a la Vygotsky. And,
> > conventionally, we can say that these changes are happening "within" the
> > child. But they are happening in a culturally organized social situation
> of
> > development. That SSD
> > is, as I understand it, both outside the child AND inside the child (as
> > previously appropriated, interiorized, and transformed, features of the
> > social interactions of which the child has been a part). The
> confrontation
> > of these changing contributions to developmental change give rise to a
> > neoformation which is..... inside the child (?), inside the child but
> > manifested externally where they have an influence on, contribute to the
> > SSD?
> >
> > How do you, David, and, according to you interpretation, LSAV, manage to
> > keep so clearly in mind what is inside and outside the child?
> >
> > Thank you for reminding me to check the polls. We will close tomorrow and
> > make the article with the most votes availalbe as soon as possible.
> >
> > mike
> >
> > On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 4:47 AM, ulvi icil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Thank you David for your valuable remarks and apologizes from all but
> >> especially from Nikolai Veresov also if I used xmca in a wrong way.
> >>
> >> Ulvi
> >>
> >>
> >> On 22/02/2009, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Dear Ulvi:
> >>>
> >>> Thanks for your long and very considered reply. I think that the
> >>> relationship between Vygotsky's psychology and larger philosophical
> >>>
> >> issues
> >>
> >>> (including Marxism) is a topic that will not go away, whether you and I
> >>> continue it or not.
> >>>
> >>> Very often, I think, we make the mistake of choosing articles for
> >>> discussion that emphasize these philosophical issues; the reasoning is
> >>>
> >> that
> >>
> >>> the more abstractly we approach the problems, the more the solutions
> will
> >>>
> >> be
> >>
> >>> applicable to everybody. We are a VERY diverse group, which is another
> >>>
> >> way
> >>
> >>> of saying we are a highly inclusive one!
> >>>
> >>> It seems to me, however, that the way to solve these questions is
> really
> >>> through PRAXIS, and through discussing articles where the larger
> >>> philosophical issues (e.g. Marxism) have immediate relevance for data
> and
> >>> for the conclusions we draw from data.
> >>>
> >>> So for example in Mariane Hedegaard's article (which I hope will soon
> be
> >>> chosen and made freely available for discussion) I think an absolutely
> >>>
> >> KEY
> >>
> >>> question is whether or not her formulation of "the crisis" is
> compatible
> >>> with Vygotsky's Is the "crisis" of Jens in kindergarten (where he
> refuses
> >>>
> >> to
> >>
> >>> settle down and listen to a fairy story and will not accept that a
> >>>
> >> picture
> >>
> >>> of a baby whale shows a "baby") a good example of a REVOLUTIONARY
> >>> restructuring of the relationship between psychological functions and
> >>>
> >> the
> >>
> >>> precocious (adventurist) SEIZURE of POWER by the child's psychological
> >>> neoformations? In what sense does Halime's failure to attend camp
> >>>
> >> represent
> >>
> >>> the emergence of a new form of mental life (a neoformation)? .
> >>>
> >>> I certainly did NOT mean to imply that Vygotsky rejected Marxism. There
> >>>
> >> is
> >>
> >>> no evidence that this is the case. All the evidence in mature Vygotsky
> >>> suggests that his methodology was getting more and more Marxist (e.g.
> his
> >>> emphasis on word meaning as a unit of analysis comparable to the
> >>>
> >> commodity).
> >>
> >>> Like you, I believe that Vygotsky refusal to call his psychology
> >>>
> >> "Marxist"
> >>
> >>> was partly a matter of hygiene. Yes, Vygotsky felt some disdain for the
> >>> noisy "Marxists" who were clearly using the word to get ahead and
> >>>
> >> discarding
> >>
> >>> the methodology.
> >>>
> >>> I think I understand this very well. In China, "Marxism" (which meant
> >>>
> >> that
> >>
> >>> you supported a very gruesome set of 19th Century Marketist "reforms")
> >>>
> >> was a
> >>
> >>> meal ticket. I never called myself a Marxist there. In Syria, a country
> >>>
> >> very
> >>
> >>> close to your own, "Marxism" was a ticket to prison; the Marxists I met
> >>> there were of considerably better quality.
> >>>
> >>> I think that Vygotsky probably despised "Marxist" psychologists like
> >>> Zalkind, who tried to show how social circumstances were rather
> >>>
> >> mechanically
> >>
> >>> mirrored in psychology, and in fact for any approach that saw the
> crises
> >>>
> >> as
> >>
> >>> being EXTERNALLY determined. For Vygotsky the sources of the crisis,
> like
> >>> the neoformation itself, lies within the child. (Whether Martin likes
> it
> >>>
> >> or
> >>
> >>> not, that is what he says!)
> >>>
> >>> To be a Marxist, as opposed to noisily calling yourself one, means to
> >>> understand that Marxism is a science, and a science simply cannot be
> >>>
> >> applied
> >>
> >>> in a mechanical way to every realm of human understanding, the way a
> >>>
> >> child
> >>
> >>> with a hammer sees every problem as a nail. Marxism is a very specific
> >>>
> >> form
> >>
> >>> of historical understanding developed in response to a particular
> problem
> >>> set.
> >>>
> >>> I don't think these problems include sex and death, or spelling in
> >>> kindergarten and learning that the word "baby" is also applied to
> whales.
> >>>
> >> In
> >>
> >>> fact, I think that Marxism applied to phylogenetic evolution,
> ontogenetic
> >>> growth and even to microgenesis in the classroom is Marxism misapplied.
> >>>
> >> As
> >>
> >>> Vygotsky liked to say, it is a bullfrog puffed up until it is the size
> of
> >>>
> >> a
> >>
> >>> cow, a theory that has compromised its explanatory power through a
> >>>
> >> process
> >>
> >>> of intellectual inflation and disciplinary imperialism.
> >>>
> >>> David Kellogg
> >>> Seoul National University of Education
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> xmca mailing list
> >>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>>
> >>>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
> >>
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> >
>
> --
> Vera John-Steiner, Ph.D.
> Regents' Professor of Education and Linguistics
> vygotsky@unm.edu (505) 277-4324
>
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--
Regards,
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