Re: [xmca] Comfort Without Preservatives, or, Jam Without Condoms

[David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>]

Thanks, everybody, but especially thanks to Bella for providing (again) very useful information about the origins of “interiorization”. 
 
Of course, I think that the existence of a cognate word in Russian is all the more reason to worry that it is a “false friend” (e.g. the French word “confiture” which looks like it must mean “comfort” but really means “jam” and the word “preservative” which looks like it must mean “preservative” but really means “condom”). If you walk into a confiserie in Calais, as poor Michael Swan once did, and ask for “de la confiture sans preservatives”, you will receive a stern lecture from the matron.
 
For us, what is most important is that “interiorization” is a term Vygotsky himself did not use. For us, the whole point of translating “Thinking and Speech” into Korean is to try to avoid some of the pitfalls that have dogged the use of Vygotsky’s work in English and even in Russian (the assimilation of Vygotsky to Piagetian constructivism on the one hand, and the overgeneralization of “activity” as a unit of analysis on the other).
 
Actually, when we wrote Guk and Kellogg 2007, the reviewers reminded us that a number of scholars have rejected the whole concept of internalization (e.g. Wertsch, who prefers “appropriation” and also van der Veer and Valsiner) and asked us to justify our use of it. 
 
At the time we didn’t know about “intravolution” and we simply used the word “internalization”, on the grounds that “interiorization” suggested that the mind is a room with a view, and that we didn’t know what the external counterpart of “interiorization” would be. Thanks to Rod, we now know it to be “extravolution”. According to Wikipedia, this is a neologism—attempts to post an article on “extravolution” have been deleted.
 
Jorge, along with Derrida, Harris, the integrationists, and possibly Peter Jones, doesn’t really see the need for a distinction between “real” words and neologisms. Of course, he’s right, at least seen from the point of view of a deconstructionist, an integrationist, or a Martian anthropologist: all words are made up, and the only real distinction here is whether they are made up microgenetically or sociogenetically. And after all, what is the distinction between microgenesis and sociogenesis? Both involve change and time.
 
But from my point of view, it DOES matter.  On my desk I’ve got some interesting data from a teacher trying to teach the children the word “yesterday”. She begins, as anybody might, be translating it into Korean (“onje”). But being a good teacher, she wants to use “yesterday” adverbially so that it reinforces, in the children’s mind, a rather more difficult concept, namely the English past tense.
 
This is difficult not because there is no equivalent in Korean (Korean has a past tense that functions very similarly to English past tense). It’s hard because the kids have an automatic tendency to uptake the PREDICATOR from a question rather than the Finite. So for example:
 
T: The moon was full on Chuseok Day. Did you see the full moon on Chuseok?
S: See. 
 
So our teacher makes a long list of sentences beginning with “yesterday” and then tells an elaborate story about the Japanese monk “Jjangu” using yesterday. Sure enough, at the end of the class, “yesterday” is one of the words the kids remember and can use (and so is the past tense). 
 
Children play with words a lot, and so do teachers (she defines “knife” as “killer’s favorite eating tool”). Let’s imagine the following:
 
a)    T: This year it was cloudy. But it was clear yesteryear.
b)    T: This month we didn’t see the moon. But we saw it yestermonth.
 
Now, according to the spell check on my Word programme, a) is acceptable, and b) is not. But from a teacher's point of view, almost the reverse would be truer: a) is probably a slip-up, a mistake (because “yesteryear” is more figurative and lyrical and isn’t used for precise time designations), but b) is a deliberate and willful act of creativity, a work of art, the kind of thing that makes it possible for the teacher to realize the great dream of all language teaching, which is to have children say things that they have never heard, and even things that nobody on earth has ever heard before. 
 
Surely, Jorge, it's a distinction that makes a difference! Vygotsky certainly thought so: he founds his distinction between “sense” and “signification” here, and with the word “intravolution”, he is using a “sense”, which does (it seems to me) include the connotation of "turning" and "revolution". Wayne Au wrote a brilliant article on the influence that Lenin had on Vygotsky, and I think here's another example. 
 
There is one thing we certainly CAN learn from the Derridistas, though: when we make a word, we are also creating a contrasting antonym. Mike thinks that “intravolution” implies “already completed”. 
 
To me the obvious contrast is with “extravolution” but above all with “intervolution”, that is, a turning, churning, burning BETWEEN people rather than within. To me, "intervolution" and "introvolution" suggest revolution, which suggests a polis, a city state, a community as a metaphor for mind. That brings to my mind, once again, Vygotsky's great genetic law of cultural development.
 
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Thu, 9/30/10, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:


From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Intravolutions and Representations
To: lchcmike@gmail.com, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Thursday, September 30, 2010, 12:57 PM


insinuation?

ORIGIN early 16th cent. (used in legal contexts in the sense [enter (adocument) in the official register] ): from Latin insinuat- ‘introduced tortuously,’ from the verb insinuare, from in- ‘in’ + sinuare ‘to curve.’

On Sep 30, 2010, at 2:34 PM, mike cole wrote:

> Concerning "Vrashchivanie": My big Russian dictionary does not have it. But
> it has the verbs, Vrashchat' and vrashchatsa.
> 
> Vrashchat' is defined as to move around one axis, to spin.
> Vrashchatsa adds the idea of to move around something.
> 
> 
> Neither of these work for me at all.
> 
> I will check the russian psych dictionary to see if its there when i get to
> the office but in looking at the suggestions so far, and trying to get an
> intuitive grasp of what it means in a Vygotskian context, I have come to the
> tentative conclusion that "involution" might work. It has both "inward"
> movement and qualitative transformation in it, at least as I understand the
> term. Intravolution seems too "already-inside" to me, enculturation MIGHT be
> used as a translation, but that depends upon your theory of the process of
> enculturation which some equate with socialization and internalization --
> two way that have their own
> issues.
> 
> Its so interesting to try to come to grips with the intuitions underlying
> such words!!
> 
> mike
> On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 11:13 AM, Armando Perez Yera
> <armandop@uclv.edu.cu>wrote:
> 
>> Larry:
>> Could you offer to me the complete reference to this book. It´s very
>> interesting the position of Sandra in regard to representation.
>> Armando
>> 
>> ________________________________________
>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf
>> Of Larry Purss [lpscholar2@gmail.com]
>> Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2010 10:16 AM
>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
>> Subject: [xmca] Intravolutions and Representations
>> 
>> Sandra J's book "Knowledge in Context: Representations, Community, and
>> Culture" is a well crafted analysis of the notion of representation as a
>> concept.
>> 
>> She takes an historical and developmental perspective towards
>> representation
>> rather than  turn away from this concept. Her book is an attempt to
>> analyize
>> the intravolution or turn inward in our notions of representations and her
>> attempt is to reclaim representation as a central notion to reflect on.
>> 
>> Sandra locates the intravolutionary movement of interiorizing
>> representation as an historical phenomenom that happened historically at
>> the
>> time of Descartes. His philosophy is representative of this historical move
>> to interiorize thinking.  Charles Taylor, in "sources of the self"  is a
>> resource Sandra uses to explore this historical time periord when the
>> representational world [and worldview] was forming and being constructed.
>> [produced?]
>> 
>> In the 19th and 20th century this intravolution was consolidated and became
>> crystallized in the cognitive intravolution when the concept of
>> representation was BIASED towards the interiorization of the "epistemic
>> function" of knowlege construction.  In this intravolutionary move two
>> other
>> central functions of reresentations were moved into the shadows as the
>> epistemic function was privileged. The two other functions of
>> representation
>> [as an historical phenomenon]  are the "dialogical function" and the
>> "expressive function"  which Sandra's book is trying to illuminate by
>> returning to the social dimension of representations and reflecting
>> on why Eurocentric notions of representation positioned representation
>> as an intravolutionary movement.  Taylor points out that it was this move
>> inward that produced a new kind of person the "expressive" self.
>> 
>> She questions the "postmodern" attempt to deny the "reality" of
>> representations by such authors as Rorty.  Instead, she looks to authors
>> such as Vygotsky, Mead, Moscovici, and Winnicott as authors who have
>> engaged
>> with Descartes intravolutionary move of interiorizing representation as
>> they
>> reTURNED to the social dimension of representation as a microgenetic,
>> ontogenetic, and sociogenetic phenomenon.
>> 
>> Sandra makes clear that the notion of representations is a HISTORICAL
>> phenomenon and does not exist outside of history.  BUT because of European
>> history and the development of the concept of representations, the
>> intravolution of representations became the "ideal model" with which we
>> MEDIATED our constuctions of "self"  subjectively, intersubjectively, and
>> objectively.
>> 
>> Sandra's position on representation is that it is a mistake to do away with
>> the concept because of its historical intravolution. I will end with a
>> direct quote from Sandra.
>> 
>> "Representations are constructive ACTS OF ENGAGEMENT. A mode of relating to
>> the world outside. It is in the social and developmental psychology of self
>> and other RELATIONS that puts back [returns?] into representational
>> processes the DIALOGICAL and EXPRESSIVE functions that are, as much as the
>> epistemic function intrinsic to SYMBOLIC FORMS."  I am reading this book on
>> a kindle ebook so cannot give the page reference.]
>> 
>> I know there has been a move to represent "representations" as
>> "affordances"
>> in order to escape the intravolutionary historical move.  From Sandra's
>> perspective we should continue to engage with the concept of representation
>> because she suggests it is a central concept in our historical time.  We
>> moderns are immersed within representational space and to understand the
>> complexity of that historically constructed space we should continue to
>> ENGAGE the concept of representation as epistemic, dialogical and
>> expressive. The move to interiorize the epistemic function and move the
>> dialogical and expressive functions into the shadows is an insight that
>> should continue to be engaged.  From Sandra's perspective, we moderns
>> cannot
>> escape representational concepts  as a model of the world. Howevr we can
>> question the model as "ideal".
>> Vygotsky, Mead, Moscovici, and others,from Sandra's perspective,  are
>> "talking back" to Descartes intravolutionary move and in that spirit Sandra
>> is engaging the concept of representations.
>> 
>> Larry
>> _______________________________________________
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>> 
>> Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas. http://www.uclv.edu.cu
>> 
>> Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas. http://www.uclv.edu.cu
>> 
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