Re: [xmca] History of triangle metaphors in post-Piagetian theory

[Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com>]

A week too late Larry, tidying up here, just a point.  For Piaget  the
differentiation of the self from the other is the major achievement of the
sensorimotor period.The infant first lives in an undifferentiated whole. But
Piaget rapidly loses interest in the other, focussed as he is on the third
person, i.e. the "it". Piaget late in his long life wrote about the social
in what was translated as "sociological studies", but the social was never
integrated into his "standard theory" by which we know him. In one late
(mostly unreadable) piece, Piaget in a schema puts consciousness as
existing  *between* the subject and the object. For LSV that would have been
unconscionable.

(When I have put my mind to reading the Companion to Piaget, I could
probably make more of a contribution than I do here.)

Carol

On 22 July 2010 21:30, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Andy
> I agree that Zittoun et al  are creating out of their own imaginations some
> mediational triangles which may not have theorized by Freud. However, I
> consider this imaginal process that attempts to ABSTRACT and make explicit
> what they "read"  as implicit in Freud's theory as a central aspect of
> generating new perspectives by coordinating previously generated
> perspectives.  Looking at  Zittoun et al's explication as a creative
> "imaginal" construction which generates a new perspective therefore seems
> to
> be a legitimate way to proceed.  However, when the ideas get posted to CHAT
> and are reflected on by scholars who take different perspectives, the
> reasonableness of their perspectives are scrutinized in a community of
> inquiry.
>
> However, what I appreciated in thes is that eir framing of psychoanalytic
> perspectives is that "emotion" is a central construct in the emergence and
> constitution of agency.
>
> I also agree Andy that what they are framing as "post-Piagetian" theory [by
> embracing Vygotsky and mediation] could be seen as going beyond Piaget and
> should no longer be framed as "piagetian" and should be called a
> "mediational" theory.  However, what I take from their review of Piagetian
> theory is the emphasis on "Other(s)" as central to emerging "agency".
>
> Therefore "emotions" in one tradition and "other" in "post" Piagetian
> theory
> are theorized or "imagined" as central.
>
> The question I posted to open this thread was the historical trajectory of
> these various mediational models. Is there a general trend of moving from
> 2nd person perspectives of actual social interaction, to a more
> "generalized
> other(s)" perspective within institutional structures, and then more
> recently towards social representations [Moscovici] and Hermeneutical
> accounts which put HISTORY [however this is theorized] as cental within
> developmental theory.
>
> As an example of this broader historical approach would be how we
> understand reason and rationality. Gillespie and Jack Martin explain acting
> on the basis of reasons as involving  reasoning about what would occur IF a
> given course of action were or were not taken. In this particular
> perspectival approach ANTICIPATED, possible consequences of particular
> actions enter into the reasoning that is the basis for acting.  What is
> thought MIGHT happen becomes a DETERMINANT of what DOES happen because
> people are are REACTING to and reasoning about POSSIBLE futures.
>
> This account of reasoning puts the imaginal anticipation of possible
> futures
> at the center of rationality.  Now my question is the historical
> constitution of this form of cognition.  Do we within Eurocentric
> historical traditions develop this particular perspectival stance towards
> "reality" as a particular perspectival frame [which on some accounts can be
> historically located in Greece in the transition from dialogue to "text" or
> is rationality a more "universal" perspective?
>
> Andy,
> If Zittoun's article's get others to REACT [respond] and it furthers
> dialogical [and textual] coordination of multiple perspectives, then its
> worth engaging with the article.
>
> Larry
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 11:29 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
>
> > Larry,
> >
> > I have read about halfway through the Zittoun paper, but I got a bit fed
> up
> > with it. Mainly, I think he is simply putting his own idea of mediation
> into
> > what he reads. On Freud for example, he creates out of his own
> imagination
> > some mediational triangles which were never seen in those terms by Freud
> > himself, so far as I know. But he makes no mention of the Id-Ego-Superego
> (I
> > grant not developmental in the sense he wants) which is a very prominent
> > triad in Freud. Nor does he make mention of Donald Winnicott who quite
> > explicitly made a mediational reading of Freud of the kind Zittoun is
> > imagining.
> >
> > Then we get to Vygotsky and his imagination runs wild. Vygotsky
> discovered
> > that people were not like animals in the mid-1920s! This is the guy whose
> > previous interests were aesthetics and lit crit before going into
> education,
> > and in his very first recorded intervention, defined consciousness as the
> > mediator between physiology and behaviour!
> >
> > As I see it, both unmediated interaction and mediation have a very long
> > history in psychology and social philosophy generally. In American and
> > German traditions, mediation is almost ubiquitous. The French on the
> other
> > hand are obsessed with dichotomy and binaries, but only for the purpose
> of
> > "exposing" and "desconstructing" them, so not as alien to mediation as
> > appears at first sight. But social and psychological analysis which takes
> a
> > unit of analysis which is unmediated is still today, I think,
> predominant,
> > as it was in the 17th century.
> >
> > And the genealogy you refer to, I mean, calling followers of Vygotsky
> > "post-Piagetian." I question whether this designation makes any sense, as
> > Piaget is a direct descendant of Kant and those looking to Vygotsky and
> Mead
> > come from a quite distinct current of thinking and were not followers of
> > Piaget. There are, of course, thinkers who use an unmediated model, such
> as
> > the intersubjectivists, who do wish to "take into account" context, but
> with
> > them "context" is moderation perhaps, but not mediation.
> >
> > Andy
> >
> >
> >
> > Larry Purss wrote:
> >
> >>  I am curious if a historical trajectory Zittoun, Gillespie, Cornish,
> and
> >> Psaltis have suggested has evloved in Piagetian developmental theory is
> a
> >> more general trend in developmental theories.  The reason I ask is it
> >> seems
> >> to parallel my emerging perspectives and questions about development.
> >>
> >> Zittoun et al suggest Piagetian models have developed through 4
> >> generations
> >> of theorizing the subject-OTHER-object model of development.
> >> [sociocognitive
> >> model]  They suggest Piaget [except in his early work] focused on the
> >> binary
> >> subject-object transmission of knowledge and was a model of interior
> >> mediation.
> >> The first generation of post-Piagetian models looked to Mead, Vygotsky,
> >> Bernstein, and Moscovici to reorient to a triadic subject-OTHER- object
> >> triangle and resocialized Piaget's model.  Subject and other have
> >> differing
> >> perspectives and this creates tension and creates a de-centering and
> >> cognitive elaborations. Chapman's term was the "epistemic triangle".  In
> >> this first generationof post-Piagetian models tension is created between
> >> persons interacting as different intentional beings,  "but these
> >> intentional
> >> participants are not typically considered in terms of their societally
> >> situated roles.
> >> A second line of post-piagetian models deepens and extends the notion of
> >> the
> >> social to the whole subject-other-object SYSTEM [context] that takes
> place
> >> in a world structured by social positions, VALUES, rules, and
> DISCOURSES"
> >> which are all factors which CONSTITUTE social positions and thus the
> >> PERSPECTIVES of the participants in the epistemic triangle.  This
> extends
> >> interpersonal coordination to include intergroup and ideological
> >> processes.
> >> This generation of models focused on the INSTITUTIONAL contexts and
> >> re-focuses on the centrality of the object as mediating SYSTEMS of
> social
> >> relations [positions]
> >> More recently another generation of epistemic triangle models is
> exploring
> >> the constitutive role  social and institutional Asymmetires within
> >> societal
> >> contexts. [Duveen]
> >>
> >> This movement from interpersonal interactivity, to institutional roles
> and
> >> positions, and then into social representations and hermeneutics  gives
> an
> >> expanding role to history and traditions and seems parallel to the
> >> direction
> >> in which my curiosity is wandering.  I was curious if the patterns or
> >> configurations of emerging epistemic triangle models of development to
> >> embrace hermeneutics, traditions, and history as the CONTEXT in which
> >> interpersonal participation is embedded is a trajectory that is more
> >> general
> >> across other triangle models of development?
> >>
> >> Larry
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> xmca mailing list
> >> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >>
> >>
> >>
> > --
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > *Andy Blunden*
> > Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/>
> > Videos: http://vimeo.com/user3478333/videos
> > Book: http://www.brill.nl/scss
> >
> >
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