RE: International course on CHAT
"While I think it is interesting and worthwhile to try to understand Vygotsky's "intentions" when he formulated this kernel, I don't think we should restrict ourselves to that enterprise." G. Wells
I, personally, second you Gordon. I think it is very "dangerous" to advocate any attempt to fit the "right" meaning of something - like in someway did M. Elhammoummi and Newton Duarte in the symposium "Vygotsky, a radical psychologist" at 5th ISCRAT. At least, that was my feeling after a first reading of their papers presented there.
"Dangerous" in the sense of the existence of an alleged only one "God" and only one "heard". This kind of thing really scares me and seems a kind of revolting intolerance according to my currrent reading-understanding of the world.
Although, as you have pointed to, it is worthwhile to recognize the philosophycal frame within which LSV develloped his thinking and ideas. So, since THIS perspective, and only according to it, in my view, Elhammoummi's and Duarte's - and also Toomela's - writtings have ideed some value.
I got myself thinking on what Vygotsky said in Psychology of Art related to the concept of "catarsis" of Aristotle. He explicitlly say that his goal was not trying to discover the kernel meaning of it, but to lend it some sense in the frame of the theory of Art he himself was attempting to expose along that book. "Catarsis" to LSV reffers to the very specifically and typically human reaction to an esthetical stimullus mediated by artistic - or cultural -signs. It is, according to him, a word used to reffer the complex reaction that results from the shock between two conflicting feelings mediated by conscious activity.
"The most important issue is to keep the dialogue going, isn't it?" G. Wells
Yes. I believe in the very importance of dialogue - and "catarsis".
Ricardo Ottoni Vaz Japiassu
Professor da Universidade do Estado da Bahia-Uneb X
http://www.ricardojapiassu.pro.br
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