Re: [xmca] catharsis and category

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Yrjo Engestrom has an article in our newletter files from the 1980's in
which he discusses Stanislavski and Vygotsky, I believe. It should be
obtainable using google at lchc.ucsd.edu.
mike

On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 12:19 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> Sorry Robert, in the midst of everything I missed this message.
> Short answer is that I don't know (and my partner, Vonney always says that
> I should shut up at that point), but Stanislavsky, Eisenstein and company
> were, I understand, friends of Vygotsky's from his student days, but others
> will have to speak on that topic. I am definitively *not *a historian. In
> any case, I am seeing if I can strike up a conversation with an expert on
> that period of Russian drama, who is outside of psychology, to get to the
> bottom of it all.
>
> Andy
>
> Robert Lake wrote:
>
>> Andy,
>> I appreciate your trace of the history of this word and wonder if
>> "category" in the theatrical sense might also be connected to LSV, and
>> Stanislavsky's notion of genre  ?
>>  /Robert L.
>> /
>> On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net<mailto:
>> ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>
>>    I should report on the outcome of my investigations of this
>>    question. Nikolai Veresov and I have met and agreed only that we
>>    cannot agree, so, so far as I know he retains his position, but I
>>    will leave it Nikolai to say what that is. I cannot speak for him.
>>
>>    However, I have verified that the word /kategoria/, was translated
>>    from Greek via Latin into English as "predicament" and from 1580,
>>    meant "predicament" in the sense of a "problematic situation" and
>>    whatismore "kategoria" is used to this day in Rhetoric and in a
>>    broadly similar sense, but only in highly specialist discourses.
>>    Not "category," just "kategoria." There is some evidence also that
>>    kategoria is used in the theory of theatre in a similar sense to
>>    this day. So, I have to give some plausibility to the claim that
>>    the word had such a sense in Vygotsky's circle of theatrical
>>    friends in Moscow before he went into psychology, but I cannot
>>    document it from that time. "Predicement" remains the technical
>>    word in theatre for the situation from which a plot develops, the
>>    source of the basic tension which drives the story. I have long
>>    been of the view, on the basis of reading Volume 5 of the LSV CW,
>>    that the "social situation of development" can be characterised in
>>    Vygotsky's view, as a "predicament." But I made the connection
>>    with a Marxist view of history, not the theory of theatre.
>>
>>    On Catharsis, I have found the source of this concept in Freud and
>>    an article by Freud is attached. It is called "working through" in
>>    this article. Interesting. It makes sense.
>>
>>    Thank you Anton, and Huw for your insights,
>>    Andy
>>
>>    Andy Blunden wrote:
>>
>>        Thank you Huw. Very encrouaging. "Resolution" seems to capture
>>        a lot of it.
>>
>>        I have consulted the OED On-line for "*category*" and found
>>        nothing surprising about its meaning, as used by Aristotle and
>>        Kant and in mathematics, more or less meaning "class" but
>>        extendable to abstract concepts. But what OED did tell me,
>>        which adds yet another intriguing thread to the puzzle, is
>>        that its Latin roots mean "predicament," and in olden days,
>>        "category" used to be translated as "predicament."
>>
>>        Now "predicament" here is related to "predicate" as in subject
>>        and predicate, a key metaphysical distinction for Aristotle
>>        and dialectics generally, but it forces me to reflect on the
>>        relation of "predicament" - and therefore "category" - to
>>        "situation", as in "social situation of development," which I
>>        have always said, based on how Vygotsky uses the term, should
>>        be understood as a "predicament," but in the common usage of
>>        this word as a situation or trap, from which one must make a
>>        development in order to escape.
>>
>>        *Catharsis*, according to OED is the Greek word meaning
>>        "cleansing" or "purging," which is of course what is commonly
>>        understood by the word. With reference to Aristotle is means
>>        "the purification of the emotions by vicarious experience."
>>        Vicarious!? The Freudian usage you referred to (thank you),
>>        Huw, is "The process of relieving an abnormal excitement by
>>        re-establishing the association of the emotion with the memory
>>        or idea of the event which was the first cause of it, and of
>>        eliminating it by abreaction."  This sounds very much like how
>>        I have understood Vygotsky to be using the term!!
>>
>>
>>        All that is fine. A true detective story, as Anton says! But
>>        what is the Russian word which is a unity of these disparate
>>        concepts??!!
>>
>>
>>        :)
>>
>>        Andy
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>        Huw Lloyd wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>            On 9 June 2011 08:24, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
>>            <mailto:ablunden@mira.net> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
>>            <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>> wrote:
>>
>>               I have been watching Nikolai Veresov's videos on vimeo.
>>            I refer to
>>               No. 2 in particular:
>>            http://vimeo.com/groups/chat/**videos/10226589<http://vimeo.com/groups/chat/videos/10226589>
>>               In this talk, Nikolai is explaining his view of the
>>            development of
>>               Vygotsky's theory of the development of the high mental
>>            functions
>>               through the appropriation of social functions, and in
>>            doing so, he
>>               appears to be mistaking the English word "category" for the
>>               English word "catharsis."
>>
>>
>>            I think that there is an issue with the English (Freudian)
>>            use of "catharsis" that refers to expression without
>>            genuine influence, which a) I don't think is cathartic and
>>            b) not what was intended in psychology of art, i.e.
>>            achieving, or identifying with, a genuine change (or
>>            resolution), even if only a resolution of a staged
>>            performance (identification), or some other art.
>>
>>            This notion of "real" catharsis then becomes more related
>>            to the notion of category.
>>
>>            In my studies and thinking I have been happy with
>>            Nikolai's use of the term category and it's relation to
>>            stage.  With respect to plan/plane correspondences there
>>            are several overlapping aspects, which seem to be quite
>>            precisely captured by this otherwise ambiguous term (joint
>>            context, intention and topological representation).
>>
>>            The dramatic conflict (category) has correspondence with
>>            (distributed) self-organisation.  The social participation
>>            of emotionally led behaviour leads to structured forms of
>>            participation, e.g. acquiring new coordinating structures
>>            in the process of achieving one's goals.
>>
>>            Huw
>>
>>
>>
>>    --     ------------------------------**------------------------------*
>> *------------
>>    *Andy Blunden*
>>    Joint Editor MCA:
>>    http://www.informaworld.com/**smpp/title~db=all~content=**g932564744<http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title%7Edb=all%7Econtent=g932564744>
>>    <http://www.informaworld.com/**smpp/title%7Edb=all%7Econtent=**
>> g932564744<http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title%7Edb=all%7Econtent=g932564744>
>> >
>>    Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/*
>> *>
>>    Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.**aspx?partid=227&pid=34857<http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
>>    <http://www.brill.nl/default.**aspx?partid=227&pid=34857<http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857>
>> >
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>>
>> --
>> *Robert Lake  Ed.D.
>> *Assistant Professor
>> Social Foundations of Education
>> Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
>> Georgia Southern University
>> P. O. Box 8144
>> Phone: (912) 478-5125
>> Fax: (912) 478-5382
>> Statesboro, GA  30460
>>
>>  /Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
>> midwife./
>> /-/John Dewey.
>>
>>
>>
> --
> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
> ------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> Joint Editor MCA: http://www.informaworld.com/**smpp/title~db=all~content=
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