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Re: [xmca] Vygotsky's Plural Discourse!!

David, I am being quite frank when I said I know nothing of this topic. I responded because I was asked to. But in any case, re Vygotsky vs. Behaviourism, I think I was basing myself on the Introduction to "Mind in Society" so perhaps Mike could clarify for me. 

Andy

David Kellogg wrote:
In defense (!) of Louis Althusser. He is really talking about the youth of a science being the SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS of newness, and as such it's a pretty good metaphor. It's in the context of Althusser's essay on Freud and Lacan (in Lenin on Philosophy and other Essays). My dear Andy, behaviorism was the official psychology of the USSR in 1923, when they barely even had an official army? When the Commissar of War, Leon Trotsky, was a fan of Freud's writings? And Vygotsky "trashed" behaviorism in a paper that claimed that consciousness could be explained as the structure of behavior? Doesn't seem likely, does it? Unlike Andy, I agree completely with Jussi's point on semiotics. Why else would LSV say that word meaning is a microcosm of human consciousness? When Vygotsky says that the mind is made of semiotic material, he is explaining exactly how it is that it becomes possible to internalize social relations as psychological ones and exactly why it is that human minds develop from the outside in rather than from the inside out. In Hegel's Phenomeonology of the Mind (section 157) he discusses the "inverted world", the moment where two modes of existence are mapped on to each other (e.g. being onto concept). We find this particular trope throughout Vygotsky whenever we pass from (e.g.) the phylogenetic semiohistorical timescale to the sociocultural one, or from the sociocultural semiohistorical timescale to the ontogenetic one. (And also from the ontogenetic to the microgenetic.) In the inverted world, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. (Or, as Mike says, the only thing we really know for sure about the mirror is that right is left is right is left.) For example, on the phylogenetic timescale sex differentiation is late emerging but on the sociocultural timescale it's very early. This, and not some purely functional difference, is why tools are different from signs. Tools are late emerging in phylogenesis, but they are very early emerging in sociocultural history, but the mastery of tools is late again in ontogenesis, and on the other hand comparatively early in the microgenetic mastery of a skill. Signs (in the form of signals) are very early emerging in phylogenesis, but very late (in the form of written symbols) in sociocultural history, and again very early in ontogenesis. The SIGNIFICANCE of signs (that is, there signifying as opposed to their indicative function) is late emerging in microgenetic development. It seems to me that THIS more than anything accounts for the CRITICAL differences we find in development when we change time scales. Of course, on one level, it's a little like comparing weather and climate (or climate and global warming). We are always talking about time and the changes wrought thereby. But the changes wrought are qualitatively different and not simply quantitatively so. When we change semiohistorical timescales (when ontogenesis erupts into sociocultural history, as when children grow up and create social progress, or when sociocultural progress changes the course of evolution, as when clothes replace fur and houses replace caves), the very order of things is changed. At some point the first must BECOME last and the last must BECOME first. That critical tipping point is not a matter of smooth development; it's a moment of violent crisis. In ontogenesis, signs do not replace tools in a gradualistic, benevolent, Biblical manner after the beatitudes; they must lay violent hands upon them and overthrow them by force. The same is true of microgenesis, at least from what I've seen. The transition from a first language to a foreign one is a profoundly uprooting experience and only much later liberating (In first language learning, we find that deliberate control of phonemes is very late, but in second language learning it's at the very beginning; conversely, in first language learning, fluency occurs almost immediately while in foreign language learning it comes late if at all.) Contrary to what Foucault says (and what Stalin thought), discourse is part of the SUPERSTRUCTURE of society. That is the very opposite of what Stalinist linguists like Ya Marr (and also Stalin himself) claimed. It's also AGAINST what Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan say today (they believe that language is the base and not the superstructure of society). Of course, if we say that language is part of the ideological superstructure and not part of the productive base of sociocultural progress (that is, cultural historical change), this does not mean that it is insignificant. But it DOES mean that it is not causative, at least with respect to cultural history. Language does not by itself bring about a transformation in the relations of production. On the semiohistorical timescale of cultural history, language cannot create or destroy state power; it is a result and not a reason, a consequence and not a cause. Of course, as we know, results can become reasons, and consequences can become causes. But when that happens, there is a qualitative change in the very domain, the timescale, of history. But late Vygotsky, Vygotsky III, knows that ontogenesis is special, distinguishable, distinct from cultural history. It's distinct precisely because in ontogenesis (but not in cultural history) language IS a reason and not just a result, word meaning IS a cause and not just a consequence. In fact, verbal thinking and imagination (and of course play) are precisely the result of the INABILITY of object oriented human activity to provide for the child's wants, needs, and desires. Here, actually, there IS a parallel with cultural history, for throughout sociocultural change, man has created literature and art precisely as a result of the INABILITY of human labour to provide from man's wants, needs, and desires for a harmonious society without the exploitation of man by man. But of course in sociocultural history, play is late emerging and in ontogenesis it's quite early, because the first shall always be last and the last shall be first. I also agree with Zinchenko's point on two paradigms: the paradigm of mediated action at the core of activity theory is NOT the paradigm of word meaning at the core of a cultural historical psychology. I think that Mike and other founders of CHAT founded it as a loose federation between two rather incompatible Vygotskies, the Vygotsky of mediated action and the Vygotsky of wod meaning, with the assumption that a common tradition and a set of common practices would hold it together. That assumption has proved quite justified. In China, we say that a good marriage is the same bed and different dreams. Otherwise, what do you talk about over breakfast? David Kellogg 
Seoul National University of Education
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Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435 Skype andy.blunden 
Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm

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