[xmca] LSV, Marx, and the key to psychology as a whole

[Jenna McWilliams <jenmcwil@umail.iu.edu>]

Please ignore this question if a) it's obviously ignorant or b) it's  
something that's already been addressed on this listserv.

I have my head twisted up in this vygotsky passage from his notebooks,  
quoted in the introduction to Mind in Society to illustrate vygostky's  
approach to making use of Marx in psychology:


"I don't want to discover the nature of mind by patching together a  
lot of quotations. I want to find out how science has to be built, to  
approach the study of mind having learned the whole of Marx's  
method... In order to create such an enabling theory-method in the  
generally accepted scientific manner, it is necessary to discover the  
essence of the given area of phenomena, the laws according to which  
they change, their qualitative and quantitative characteristics, their  
causes. It is necessary to formulate the categories and concepts that  
are specifically relevant to them  in other words, to create one's own  
Capital.

"The whole of Capital is written according to the following method:  
Marx analyzes a single living 'cell' of capitalist society--for  
example, the nature of value. Within this cell he discovers the  
structure of the entire system and all of its economic institutions.  
He says that to a layman this analysis may seem a murky tangle of tiny  
details. Indeed, there may be tiny details, but they are exactly those  
which are essential to 'micro-anatomy.' Anyone who could discover what  
a 'psychological' cell is--the mechanism producing even a single  
response--would thereby find the key to psychology as a whole."


I'm also working through Martin Packer's 2006 AERA talk in which he  
considers the link between Marx's work and Vygotsky's, though  
acknowledging that "there are many Marxes, and indeed there are many  
Vygotskies." He argues that "a ‘Marxist psychology’ meant, for  
Vygotsky, a psychology which would bring about a revolution in the  
science of psychology, grasping and articulating the contradictions  
and conflicts in which psychology had become mired, and resolving and  
transcending these contradictions. A dialectical method of analysis –  
focused on the ‘cell’ – would play a central role, but clearly what  
Vygotsky drew from Marx went far beyond a mere method."

There's a lot to unpack in this passage (and for anyone who's  
interested in reading "Is there a Vygotskian philosophy after Marx?",  
You can grab the .pdf of it here), but what I'm most interested in at  
the moment is how to think of the "cell" in Vygotsky's approach. Can  
anyone help elucidate how this idea plays out in his writings,  
methodology, or efforts toward a cultural psychology?

Thanks in advance!
jenna

~~

Jenna McWilliams
Learning Sciences Program, Indiana University
~

http://jennamcwilliams.com
http://twitter.com/jennamcjenna

~
jenmcwil@indiana.edu
jennamcjenna@gmail.com










~~

Jenna McWilliams
Learning Sciences Program, Indiana University
~

http://jennamcwilliams.com
http://twitter.com/jennamcjenna

~
jenmcwil@indiana.edu
jennamcjenna@gmail.com








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