The impression was quite natural as the first day, housed in the beautiful
new Music House of Aarhus contained in the morning (after the formal
opening speeches) a lecture by V.A.Lektorsky in honour of V.V.Davydov, the
lecture prepared by Davydov for the ISCRAT read by Jocahim Lompscher, and
then Ghita Vygotskaya remembering her father. Then the whole afternoon
session was framed in honour of Marx Wartofsky.
On the other hand, for me personally this was also very much a congress of
the living: I got to meet for the first time so many people that I have
known for YEARS electronically (and compliments to the organizers for the
very readable name badges). Well, I mustn't forget the second-timers from
AERA or the n-th timers from elsewhere... BUT the first-timers must have
been the majority for me. To start with, I found Alfred Lang and latched on
to him for most of the rest of that first day. So what I remember best from
the lecture written by Davydov is how it provided material for discussion
through the whole lunch break, as some of us tried to construct a joint
understanding of why Davydov had introduced the concept of "need" on two
different levels, well and then actually also two different concepts, one
of which was still translatable as "need", the other one not translatable
into English except by linking to the German "Bedarf". Actually, I would
appreciate some reconstructive input from others on this lecture. And
perhaps it could be made available? Davydov seemed to have been grappling
within the framework of his Russian situation with questions of
subjectivity and emotion-cognition that were quite close to current
concerns in California. Just a different genre and terninology.
The narrative of Vygotskaya's childhood memories is easier to remember and
retell: Inside this dimly lit velvet underwater cave of an auditorium,
there was Vygotskaya greeting the audience in English, the congress
language, and then silently, vividly PRESENT while Anna Stetsenko read the
English translation: Two women, one voice. It came very much alive to me,
this family of four, living in a single room (which may have been the one
in the souterrain of the Psychology Institute that V.V.Davydov pointed out
to us after the Moscow ISCRAT). How Ghita and her little sister went to bed
and sleep in the same room where Vygotsky and his colleagues were
discussing their science. How other nights, when Father was working late at
his desk, the rest of the family sleeping, Ghita would wake up and tell him
to go to bed: "yes, soon, I just have to write a little more". How the
family would not disturb father while he was working... and how Ghita would
get his attention when there was something she REALLY had to talk about, by
standing quietly just behind him until he noticed. How she inadvertently
offended Luria one evening by wishing him: "Good health, and may you grow
up to be big and smart" when he sneezed -- the other adults laughed, Luria
looked embarrassed, something clearly was amiss. Five-year-old Ghita asked
her Father the next day -- he told her to think hard for herself, which she
did... and when he came back she had the solution: "well, adults think they
ARE already so big and smart, don't they?"
All in all this was probably the most engaging conference I've ever been
to... but it is all mixed up in my memory: sessions, people I met, and the
hospitable setting of Aarhus. The price I paid was coming home with a
stubborn bronchial infection: thus the subjecct line.
Eva
PS: Vera, did you really go to Helsinki? Or was it just the ever-present
activity of Yrjo (I think he was scheduled in some function in every slot!)
that transformed the ISCRAT setting into Finland?