Re: [xmca] Corragio!

That part of our skype conversation is likely to obscure to xmca-ites David.
So a little background and thanks for the encouragement.

David and I, after discussing our intrepretations of the passages in LSV
chapter 5 about goal.task.action.activity.......... talked a little about
xmca
discourse. I repeated something I have said before and which we are trying
to "improve upon" in the xmca facility -- the tendency of the conversations
to
"slide" sideways, as new features of a topic come up combined with the the
fact that many topics come up, over a period of years, repeatedly, but what
was achieved in terms of explication at time n is no longer remembered at
time n + x. There are some tools to deal with these issues, and David
suggested on, the uses of a concordance program. We will look into it.

But David also raises another issue which we are seeking to address by
adding a straightforward "links" action to LCHC. In just the past week, the
Korean site that David tells about included, we have learned of interesting
sites from Derek, and I tripped over the site at Bath where there was a
discussion recently about Leontiev that was webcast, even, and where members
of XMCA knew it was going on even as we discussed the issues
and no one mentioned it! Like kiddies engaged in parallel play, disguised as
grownup thinking theoretically and engaging in international collaboration.

Perhaps XMCA-ites could help out by sending to xmca varous links they
think would be good to bring together. Seems like ISCAR would be the right
aegis under which to place all of this.

Any ISCAR officials listening in? Any suggestions.

Interesting comment about Sausure and Voloshinov, thanks David.
mike

On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 5:57 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:

> Mike:
>
> You sounded a little discouraged. Let me show you something. It's mostly in
> Korean, but I think you will like it anyway:
>
> http://cafe.naver.com/vygotsky
>
> As you can see, it's a very big cafe style website: many rooms, lots of
> material, and many different functions. Among other things it does this:
>
> a) It's a major means by which the work of MCA and xmca gets translated
> into Korean and disseminated in Korea.
>
> b) It is a vehicle for the "Institute of Progressive Education", founded
> and funded by the Korea Educational Workers Union (recently legalized and
> just now being unlegalized by the new Yi Myeongbak dictatorship).
>
> c) It's the main place where our Thinking and Speech translation group
> meets while I am here in America with my wife.
>
> But I didn't set it up.To tell you the truth, I discovered it quite by
> chance, through one of my grad students, only about a month ago. It was set
> up back in April by militants of the KCTU, the Korean Confederation of Trade
> Unions.
>
> Like any cafe frequented by busy workers, it's a bit of a complexive mess.
> Alongside the work of Michael Cole (lovingly translated into Korean by the
> director of the Institute of Progressive education, Bae Hicheol, who teaches
> third, fourth, fifth and sixth graders in a single classroom school up in
> the mountains of Kangwando) there are ruminations about Desmond Morris and
> the Naked Ape that would make you cringe.
>
> There are even things that make me cringe, like the invidious comparison
> between Yrjo Engestrom's work with Finnish primary education and our own
> work (we've got TEN times the population!)
>
> But this is the power of complexive thinking! When one branch runs into a
> dead end, you almost always find some offshoot flourishing. Volosinov
> thought that was a GOOD thing, not a BAD thing.
>
> And yes, Volosinov really LOATHED Saussure; one of the things he liked to
> point out was that if Saussure's view of language was correct, any breakdown
> in the system would render ALL of the other elements meaningless.
> Fortunately, complexive thinking is not like that.
>
> dk
>
>
>
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Received on Sat Dec 20 09:26:21 2008