Re: [xmca] Names As Histories

Apologies, an afterthought.
Isn't this the same issue that Vygotsky was dealing with in his famous
study of thinking and speaking? Is there pre-verbal intelligence? Is there
pre-intelligent speech? Yes to both, but they intersect and that
intersection is precisely the point of interest, the famous "unit of
analysis"? Same thing here. A unity has to be constituted not defined.
Andy
At 02:26 PM 3/03/2008 +1100, you wrote:
>My response, Professor Kellogg, would be this:
>
>Because we are talking about psychology, when we say "development" we mean
>"development of psychological functions" not "development of social
>situation." In English, we just don't have a word to express the identity
>of these two, and other languages don't seem to be much better. But all
>such identities are always only relative. Even though social situation and
>psychological disposition mutually constitute (not just 'cause', etc) one
>another, they are not necessarily identical.
>
>But to me this dissonance means that the person concerned has a
>contradiction *within* their personality, not that their "actual"
>personality is different from what people around them indicated it to be
>in their behaviour in relation to the person. It is all personality, but
>that personality is not just "inside" - it is equally outside and between.
>
>Does that stand up?
>Andy
>At 06:34 PM 2/03/2008 -0800, you wrote:
>>The other day at a grad school retreat in the mountains of Kangwando, we
>>were all supposed to get up and introduce ourselves. As often happens,
>>each speaker used the speech of the previous speaker as a kind of
>>template for their own speech, and because the first speaker had recently
>>legally changed her name, we all ended up talking about our names and
>>trying to cram as much as possible of our personal history into
>>explaining the name.
>>
>> People who had recently chosen their names were at a distinct
>> advantage of course, but we ALL had choices that we chose to highlight
>> (e.g. I have a Jewish first name and a Christian middle name and I never
>> use my middle name. I also do not invert my surname and given name, as
>> Korean academics have to do when they work abroad, and I used this to
>> deliver a potted speech on linguistic imperialism).
>>
>> On the bus on the way back it struck me that this was a quite
>> interesting metonymy for the way in which children form part of but are
>> nevertheless distinguishable from the social situation of development,
>> because kids are confronted with a ready-made name (and also a ready
>> made pronominal system) but they certainly take their developmental time
>> about acquiring it, and their decisions are never quite completely
>> reducible to the decisions their parents make.
>>
>> It's with this metonymy in mind I turn to Mike's comments on the draft
>> I sent to Mike and Heidi (and of course everybody else on the list as
>> well--xmca is a party where everybody is invited even if not everybody
>> smokes ganja or reads the Bible). Here's what I said, and here's what
>> Mike said:
>>
>> ME: The nominative function of language is at first fleeting and even
>> evanescent: the child¡¯s first names are multi-functional and may
>> externally appear little different form ¡°there¡± or ¡°this¡± or
>> ¡°that¡±. But it reflects a fundamentally different social situation of
>> development for the child: whereas previously language consisted of a
>> closed class of repeated words and a potentially infinite variety of
>> situations, it now consists of an open class of varying names, and a
>> closed class of nameable objects. Similarly, the nominative function
>> refracts a fundamentally different neoformation within the child,
>>
>> MIKE: In the first case, what is the it and where is it located?
>>
>> ME: Well, I guess the "it" is the nominative function of words. It's
>> the ability of the child to name himself and other objects. To my mind,
>> this has to be distinguished from the INDICATIVE function, because when
>> I use words like "this" or "that" or "da" the word is repeated but the
>> object is changed and when I use words like "David" or "Mr. Kellogg" or
>> "David Jesse Kellogg" (see why I don't use my middle name?) I am
>> changing the word but repeating the object. On the other hand, it also
>> has to be distinguished from the SIGNIFYING function, because I cannot
>> use this name without the object itself actually being right there in
>> the room with me, the way that things have to be there when you talk
>> about them using "this" and "that" and "da" in an indicative way.
>>
>> MIKE: In the second case I am wondering about what I have missed since
>> I read, above ¡°Vygotsky¡¯s ¡°neoformation¡± represented a psychological
>> structure that was itself a part of a larger sociological structure, the
>> social situation of development. ¡° Seems like SSD is shifting around a
>> lot and I am not tracking well. That may be life. May be a need for
>> closer inspection.
>>
>> ME: I guess I don't agree that being part of a larger sociological
>> structure means that I am indistinguishable from that structure. My name
>> both links and distinguishes me from the people around me, and in fact
>> it's because those people around me keep shifting that I need more than
>> one name to stay metastable.
>>
>> For example, I have to go teach the undergrads in a minute, and then
>> tonight I'm going to teach a grad class. I'm wondering if I should use
>> the same name: the undergrads like "Mr. K" but the grads never use
>> anything but "Professor Kellogg.
>>
>> MIKE: You said "Some of these neoformations receive support from the
>> social situation of development and become permanent " But here SSD
>> seems real outside. "Autonomous¡± speech is ¡°autonomous¡± in one sense,
>> though; it is sui generis, and, receiving no support from the social
>> situation of development, doomed to die."
>> This seems real outside too.
>>
>> ME: Yes, it does seem like the SSD at one point in its history DOES
>> confront the child as an environment. The child has to look for
>> affordances and adapt to it. I think that's where development comes
>> from. For example, my choices of name need to adapt to the class I'm
>> addressing. I can propose, but they're gonna dispose.
>>
>> I'm a Darwinian that way. But I'm a Russian Darwinian, who believes in
>> survival of the most collaborative as well as survival of the most
>> competitive and who therefore believes in a potentially expandable role
>> for volition.
>>
>> YOU: .....
>>
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Seoul National University of 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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  Andy Blunden : http://home.mira.net/~andy/ tel (H) +61 3 9380 9435,
mobile 0409 358 651

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Received on Sun Mar 2 20:56 PST 2008