I sat down yesterday to read through all the leontiev notes, seeking to
see if there was somewhere that I might have a question or make a
contribution of some other kind.
It was a pretty overwhelming experience. Lots of contributions. But over
and above the sheer quantity, there appeared to be a marked tendency to
wander away from the text. By the time I had read the entire set, and
those added this morning, I was pretty nearly at a loss.
I went this morning to the web page to try to retrieve key messages I
dimly remembered from earlier in the week that stuck close to the text
and its interpretation (PaulD, Helen, Andy, Peter(?), and others) but
we seem to be in a time warp between September and October, and my
ability to retrieve specific messages is temporarily out of whack so
I will make just a couple of comments of a general sort that may or may
not be helpful.
first, by the time this book was written, Leontiev was quite elderly as
Mohammed pointed out, and perhaps more importantly, it was Rubinshtein,
not his, version of the THE Marxist psychology which was in power. And I
do mean power. Leontiev's students were not welcome at US-USSR seminars
sponsored by the Academy of Sciences. And Americans who sought them
out were doing so outside of legal channels.
Andy, I believed, mentioned Rubinshtein, and I strongly recommend that those
with a strong interest in Marxism and psychology consult works of his
published in Soviet Psychology/JREEP or T.R. Payne's book (circa 1970)
on Rubinshtein and the philosophical foundations of Soviet Psychology.
Articles by Brushlinsky and Abulkhanova-Slavskaya in same source paint
Leontiev as a behaviorist and Vygotsky as a "signo-o-centric" idealist.
(Passim discussion of tensions between CH and AT).
Second, I personally would prefer to return to the text, perhaps moving
on to ch2 if folks have assimilated ch 1 to their satisfaction. I do
not find my reading of chapter 1 illuminating about the problems of class,
classrooms, and American education, nor is it clear to me how to get back
from the various assertions on that topic the past day to ch 1.
After we have read what Leontiev has to say in the 5 chapters, there are
a LOT of interesting issues raised in the branching disucssions that I
would like to pick up. My limited information processing capacity is
showing here, but I may not be unique in this respect.
mike
PS-- Mohammed-- I would be very happy to see the Zazzo article on
Leontiev published in English in the translation journal. It sounds
fascinating.
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