[xmca] Foucault and Vygotsky?

[Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>]

Jenna, I will give you my response to your question as best I can.
My theoretical home is Vygotsky reading Marx reading Hegel, OK?

Foucault doesn't really fit into that, but I find that Foucault (and his 
interpreters in post-structural theory, especially feminists) have given 
us such valuable insights, that I am happy to welcome them into my mind 
and try to work with them.
But I have never been able to integrate Vygotsky/Marx/Hegel with 
Foucault, in the way they fit with each other, coming from the one 
intellectual stream. I might say that the popularity of Vygotsky in the 
US from the late 1970s was owed in part to that much maligned book "Mind 
in Society," but in large measure was also due to the student radicalism 
afrfecting campuses and the students were looking for a radical critique 
of psychology, and Vygotsky provided that.

I find myself checking what I think, thanks to help from 
Vygotsky/Marx/Hegel against what I think Foucault would say. And vice 
versa. Certainly there are simplistic elements of "orthodox Marxism" 
(such as was taught by the Communist Parties during the Soviet days), 
extreme idealistic positions in Hegel, and some naivete at times in 
Vygotsky, which in these postmodern times we can see are mistaken, and 
that is partly thanks to Foucault as well as quite simply the times we 
live in. It is not too difficult to take these simplistic elements out 
of the legacy of Hegel-Marx-Vygotsky without touching what is essential. 
For example, it would be ridiculous nowadays to take Hegel's "formation 
of consciousness" to be represented in a single nation-state. That is 
almost self-evident to us today, because every nation-state is riddled 
with contradictions between conflicting projects, a.k.a, "formations of 
consciousness" or "projects" or "social formations." No nation-state is 
a harmonious community in any sense at all. For example, some of our 
Russian friends still, loing after the fall of the USSR, still take 
their culture to be historically superior to that of indigenous 
cultures, as a totality. That implies the same kind of totalisation just 
alluded to. Again, I think we owe these better insights to Foucault and 
other late-20th century thinkers ... and the nature of our own times! 
But I find that at a foundational level, these latter philosophers are 
wanting. That's my opinion. But as we found last month, my understanding 
of Foucault is also far from perfect. Others will have to give more 
informed answers.

Andy

Jenna McWilliams wrote:
> ... about how folks conceive a poststructural frame(ing) of sociocultural theory and, in particular, of CHAT. 


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