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Re: [xmca] The Problem of the environment



I see. I think the way Vygotsky makes and illustrates his point is open to misinterpretation, and in my opinion, Lydia Bozhovich misinterprets it actually! In relation to what you say, I think it would be a mistake to conclude from Vygotsky's refusal to theorise a situation as objective, that we ought to theorize the subjective as well. The difficult point he is trying to make is that the situation is subjective/objective and there is no sense in talk of objective on one hand and subjective on the other. This is a problem of philosophy which goes back, in my view, to Fichte, who introduced the notion of activity specifically to overcome this problem.

How to explain this? Not easy. Our thinking is so locked into subjective and objective as two distinct domains. Vygotsky tried to illustrate it by means of 3 siblings, not in the same situation, but maybe we could say apparently in the same situation, to the dichotomous observer so to speak. This does not mean that he thinks that subjective level of development is /another factor /to be taken into account; /au contraire/.

Bozhovich, on the other hand, ascribes an “intellectualist” view to Vygotsky when she says that Vygotsky “felt that the nature of experience in the final analysis is determined by how children understand the circumstances affecting them, that is, by how developed their ability to generalize is.” Here I think Bozhovich take Vygotsky's example to be archetypes rather than exemplars.

I have a little article on this here: http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/bozhovich.htm but other know far more than me, Larry.

Andy

Larry Purss wrote:
Andy
reading Vygotsky's article on he environment focused on the cultural-historical environment as being the "model" that mediates the individuals emerging subjectivity. When Vygotsky describes 3 siblings as developing in unique ways because each child was at a different subjective level of development meant that each child was going through a unique environment even though they were in the same social situation. My question was attempting to explore or bracket the unique subjective aspects of each child and how cultural-historical theory explores or brackets the specific developmental level of each child. As I read Vygotsky on the environment the centrality of subjectivity and emotion of each child's unique developmental level seemed central interacting with environment. My question was how these subjective levels are theorized in CHAT and the place of "subjective" motivation in the theory. Vygotsky, in this article explained each child's position as unique from the other siblings because of each child's level of development. The question is how to understand subjective development as central to CHAT
Larry

On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 7:14 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:

    I don't know if I entirely understand you, Larry. I have benefited
    recently from reading this article, and reading this and a Lydia
    Bozhovich article from JREEP, together with Marilyn Fleer and her
    wonderful group of researchers at Monash Uni. (some of whom have
    attended the Golden Keys School courses in Russia over the past 2
    years) and watching Peter Smaogorinsky's talk about Vygotsky's
    Psychology of Art, into which he trew some insights about
    /perezhivanija/ culled from conversations with Dot Robbins. All
    this has leant bucket loads of nuances to the word /perezhivanie/
    for me.

    At the moment, I think we have to take a /perezhivanie/ to be an
    emotion-laden experience, something which could be called a trauma
    or catharsis, though I am not sure that the strong and
    transformative associations of these words in English is
    essential, *and* "social situation of development." SSD, to us
    non-Russian speakers at least, has a strongly objectivist
    connotation. But it is not really necessarily so, is it? A
    situation is only a situation for you insofar as it impinges on
    your vital needs, within the horizons of your consciousness of
    those needs (a genetic diseaase you are unaware of may kill you
    but it cannot drive your psychological development until you learn
    of it). So a social situation is both subjective and objective. I
    believe the same is true of /perezhivanie/, normally translated as
    "lived experience" or "emotional experience." We non-Russian
    speakers tend to take this concept as subjective. "Experience" is
    subjective; it has almost always been taken that way in the
    history of philosophy. But when you think about it, it is not a
    different concept from "social situation." So I take
    /perezhivanie/ as meaning both: it is a social situation insofar
    as it exists within the horizon of your perception and impinges on
    your needs (it's not a situation if it has no significance for you).

    So this is a discrete event, not something continuous, as is
    implied in the words /catharsis /and /trauma/,

    So it functions as a unit of analysis ... and this is important
    ... for *consciousness as a whole*. That is, for the entirety of a
    person's relation to their environment, if we take, as we must,
    that we mean "consciousness" in the Marxist sense, as "all
    inclusive." The notion of social situation "connects up" with the
    experience with the larger social context, from which it is quite
    inseparable.

    So I just don't see the place for ideal models here. The concepts
    above do not idealise in that sense.

    Does this go to your question, Larry?

    Andy

    Larry Purss wrote:

        Andy
        Thanks for posting Vygotsky's article The Problem of the
        Environment" first
        published in "Foundations of Paedlogy" (1935)
        I want to bracket on e paragraph for further reflection.

        ".... the ESSENTIALfactors which explain the influence of
        environment on the
        psychological development of children, and on the development
        of their
        conscious PERSONALITIES, are made up of their emotional
        experiences
        [petrezhivanija]. The emotional experience [perezhivane]
        ARISING from any
        situation or from any aspect of this environment, DETERMINES
        what KIND of
        influence this situation or this environment will have on the
        child.
        Therefore, it is not any of the factors IN THEMSELVES (if
        taken without
        reference to the child) which determines how they will
        influence the

        future course of his development, but the SAME FACTORS
        REFRACTED through the
        PRISM OF THE CHILD"S EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE [perezhivanie]...."

        I recognize that perezhivanie and "ideal models" in the
        environment cannot
        be analyzed separately as "units of analysis" BUT for
        heuristic reasons can
        perezhivanie be braceted to elaborate the motivational
        "systems" that
        dynamically interact with the ideal models??
        The question that I'm asking is if it is appropriate to
        analyze the basic
        primary emotions that interact with the ideal forms? A new book is
        elaborating a "motivational systems theory" based on dynamic
        systems theory
        and the article just mentioned has me thinking.

        Larry
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*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
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Book: http://www.brill.nl/scss


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