RE: [xmca] Did the Butterfly Leave the Cocoon, and then what?

Andy, come on - to say it's difficult to understand somebody if you haven't read one of the progenitors of their ideas is a rather dicey proposition. I mean it seems to me Vygotsky took his ideas from a number of different sources. I've also heard people say you couldn't understand what Vygotsky meant by concepts if you haven't read Stern. Others say you can't really understand Vygotsky if you haven't read Spinoza. I could make the argument that you can't understand what Vygotsky meant by empiricism unless you read James. I mean all different sources go in to all our ideas, but in the end they are our ideas, and they rise and they fall and they are understood or misunderstood as a result of our own efforts.
 
Michael
________________________________

From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Andy Blunden
Sent: Fri 2/22/2008 5:49 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: RE: [xmca] Did the Butterfly Leave the Cocoon, and then what?

Philip, I've always wondered how someone who has not read Hegel understands
what LSV meant by a "genuine concept" as opposed to a "pseudo-concept" at
all actually. And how anyone who had not read Marx's Capital could
understand what LSV meant by a "unit of analysis." Self-evidently people
do, so I admit to an element of irony here, but what about it?
Andy
At 12:31 PM 22/02/2008 -0700, you wrote:
>Martin, I found your paper a pleasure to read - provided for me multiple
>insights about LV, particularly about the intellectual-historical context
>that he matured in. What i'm writing here is rather a kind on running
>dialogue, based on your text, my experiences, other texts i've read.
>
>I can't say that these are my final thoughts, or concrete - mostly
>thoughts that stochastically emerged in response to your text. (by the
>way, don't you think that Wertsch took history into account in the text in
>which he describes the history of pole vaulting, and the historical
>changes that emerged over time as practice and technology changed?)
>
>so, what i'm about to put out here is a kind of muddle that's my initial
>start in working with your paper.
>
>for me the answer to your title is "yes, Vygotsky is relevant." After
>reading your paper, my own conclusion is that Vygotsky's work has
>transcended Marxism. I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion that it's
>necessary for future scholars to read "Marx, Hegel, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky
>...". I strongly agree that it is "perhaps naïve to think that we can use
>the one (psychology) that Vygotsky fashioned unmodified", as you write in
>your final sentence.
>
>I thought of Newton as I read your paper, all of his "natural laws" of
>motion and light that he constructed, and considered too that Newton was
>at heart and practice, an alchemist. To understand Newton, we do
>understand his historical context, but we don't read the alchemy texts in
>order to understand his work - even his construction of labeling his work
>"laws of nature", in order to avoid being attacked as a religious heretic,
>we understand - so that when Newton explains that he's merely revealing
>the laws of God, I don't think then that we turn to the bible for further
>illumination or Aquinas or Descartes.
>
>So too with Vygotsky - the authors you, Martin, cite (Marx, Hegel, Engels,
>Lenin & Trotsky) - I look back to as situated in a word of positivism,
>with beliefs of utopianism (new society, new man & forces controlled by
>men themselves & the root of the content and disconent of mend, and which
>in that way determines their destiny & the new man could self-consciously
>grasp and master the laws of his own formation & time to change the world
>& fate & destiny & science of history & the natural laws of society's
>movement & lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society,
>etc.) and I consider what epistemological failures these beliefs were.
>
>Instead, I consider Gregory Bateson (1904 - 84), who had many of the same
>concerns as Vygotsky (1896 - 34), or Foucault (1926 - 84), as well as
>Pierre Bourdieu and Bruno Latour, who emerged also out of the tradition of
>Kant, and Hegel, and yes, referred back to Marx and Engels, though
>certainly not Lenin and Trotsky, 'and struggled with the multiple
>questions of "mind in society" -
>
>I find the greatest strength in your paper beginning on page 23 with
>'Vygotsky's Account of 'Child History'" . I think Vygotsky's brilliant
>lies in picking out gems from Marx - as in your quotes - but then building
>a method of research that looks at consciousness, language, memory, change
>over time - and the utilization of the concept of 'sublated'. Vygotsky's
>exploration of consciousness is so much richer and grounded in the
>dialectic of theory and practice, than say Jung's or Freud's notions of
>consciousness. It is a brilliant insight, as you explain, in the
>understanding of "coming to act on oneself as one acted on others, or as
>others acted on one" (p. 28). (Which goes a long way in explaining why
>Russians failed at socialism - tracing their historical path of a
>multiplicity of repressions for 500 years - and why northern European
>nations did such a far more successful job of socialism - those nations
>did not have 500 years of state police, censorship, and power residing in
>a single person - they had a far greater source of flexibility of cultural
>resources to build on.) So, for a conception of history to build a new
>psychology on, a new pedagogy in my case, I'd much rather look to
>Foucault, Bateson, Vygotsky, Bourdieu, Cole, Wertsch, and read Tolstoy's
>"War and Peace" - for in Tolstoy one sees that the stochastic emergence
>of events assures that there is no developmental path of history, much
>less psychology and education.
>
>
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  Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
mobile 0409 358 651

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