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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