Re: contextualism

Ricardo Ottoni (rjapias who-is-at ibm.net)
Fri, 19 Mar 1999 21:49:03 -0300

Mike Cole wrote:
>
> (...) Such
> considerations lead to the unavoidable conclusion that in order to give an account of
> culturally mediated thinking it is necessary to include in one's analysis not only a
> specification of the artifact through which behavior is mediated, but the
> circumstances in which the thinking occurs.(...)
> behavior must be understood relationally, in relation to "its context" as the expression
> goes.

I think Vygotsky had an excellet command of how to construct enuciates.
Much of what he had said through his books makes me feel like Hamlet in
shakespeare's tragedy: To be or not to be? (is he using his cultural
development theory also to talk about things he could not refer directly
in those days?) It's like he could talk about what was happening in USSR
(with him, his troika etc) and, at the same time, about a very coherent
theory of how a human beeing's mind fuctions and operates, according to
historical-materialism principles, through the use of "open" phrases and
words...
The question of thought/thinking behind words raised since
Stanislavsky's theatrical concept of "sub-text" (Thinking and Speach/
Thought and Language)seem points in that direction too.

Can be contextualism understood in this sense, without prejudice of
other ones?