Dear David,
First of all I want to thank you and Andy for the clear and astute
reading and rendering of Vygotsky's Psychology of Art.
I loved every second of the interview, even hearing and seeing Andy
laugh!
Secondly, when you shared LSV's notion that a work of art is
irreducible I thought of metaphor again. For example, I.A. Richards
wrote in 1936 that...
“Thought is metaphoric, and proceeds by comparison, and the metaphors
of language derive therefrom” (p. 94).
In other words, he believed that at the base of all thinking, there is
a metaphoric relationship. Richards takes this one step further when he
suggests that metaphors are “cognitively irreducible” (Johnson, 1981, p.
19) and cannot be reduced to statements of literal meaning.
A metaphoric expression therefore becomes a newly created vehicle of
meaning which loses potency as well as the possiblity of providing
personal voice and agency when it is made into a literal statement from
its component parts. For example, what would happen to this poem?
FOG
by: Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Thanks again,
RL
P.S. Is there a copy of your paper on this posted somewhere?
Robert Lake Ed.D.
Assistant Professor
Social Foundations of Education
Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Georgia Southern University
P. O. Box 8144
Phone: (912) 478-5125
Fax: (912) 478-5382
Statesboro, GA 30460
Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
midwife.
-John Dewey.
David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> 10/10/2010 9:08 PM >>>
Thanks, Nancy. And above all thanks to Andy, not just for making the
resource available but for providing a long list of provocative
questions that had me tugging my beard rather more than I should have.
I was telling Andy that I started the whole project with some contempt
for Leontiev's lukewarm preface, where he says that Vygotsky himself did
not want the book published, but that it was now a historical document
for the understanding of Soviet science so we have to get it out there
anyway.
Ivanov, on the other hand, says that the book is a complete manuscript
readied for publication by Vygotsky himself (and Ivanov, by the way, is
pretty harshly criticized, so it is with great generosity of spirit that
he champions this book and writes a very warm commentary to it).
But perhaps Leontiev's ungenerous preface is right in this much: the
most exciting ideas in it are completely undeveloped:
a) The hidden link between aesthetics and ethics. Vygotsky REALLY
believes this: art's about the GOOD LIFE, and it can help us get there,
not just in our imagination but in real ontogenesis and even
sociogenesis.
b) The true analytical unit of art. It just CAN'T be the "aesthetic
contradiction". That's like saying that the analytical unit of chemistry
is the "chemical contradiction". Feh.
c) The dramatization of egocentric speech in Hamlet. It's a borderline
piece, written somewhere between Revenge fantasies and psychological
novels, and marvelously contradictory for that reason. It's the
self-directed soliloquies that made it totally different! When "To be or
not to be" is translated into Korean, it's just "To live or to die". But
of course you can read it exactly other way: "to be" is to take up arms,
and then not to be, and "not to be" is to bow your head, and go on
living. Only human thought processes have this kind of lyrical quality;
the perception processes on which revenge fantasies and horror shows of
the time were based were shallow, one dimensional things in comparison.
d) The "social technique of emotion" and the teaching on the emotions.
Vygotsky's on to something here, but what? Just as it's hard to imagine
analyzing the "psychology" of a work of art (how do we do a
psychological analysis of something that does not have a mind?) it's
really hard to imagine a technique of emotion without a "what for" and
not simply a "what with".
It's tempting to say that a) is really the answer to d)! But if it's an
answer, it's not a direct one; there is, and there should be, a whole
book in between. The problem is that Leontiev was really right; this
book is not that one. Not yet.
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education
--- On Sun, 10/10/10, Nancy Mack <nancy.mack@wright.edu> wrote:
From: Nancy Mack <nancy.mack@wright.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Interview with David Kellogg on Vygotsky's
Psychology of Art
To: ablunden@mira.net, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
<xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Sunday, October 10, 2010, 11:06 AM
Andy,
I cannot thank you enough for this wonderful opportunity to hear two
scholars interpret the Psychology of Art.
These videos are a wonderful source for others who are interested in
Vygotsky.
I greatly enjoyed them and thanks to both David and Peter for
permitting these talks to be shared.
Nancy Mack
Professor of English
Wright State University
http://www.wright.edu/~nancy.mack
----- Original Message -----
From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
Date: Sunday, October 10, 2010 5:07 am
Subject: [xmca] Interview with David Kellogg on Vygotsky's Psychology
of Art
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Our collection of videos at http://vimeo.com/groups/39473/videos
now has an interview with David Kellogg on Vygotsky's Psychology
of Art
http://vimeo.com/groups/39473/videos/15686944
Peter's interview http://vimeo.com/groups/39473/videos/14844396
and
David's are not a debate, or even a dialogue really, but two
different
views of the same work of Vygotsky, by two different people. But
together they bring out the richness of the topic. Anyone else
want to
add their own view?
Please enjoy,
Andy
Andy Blunden wrote:
So far as I can tell, vimeo.com just offers a server to store
and
stream your video. Anything beyond that we need to put on a
server
elsewhere and link to the videos on vimeo, I think.
There is certainly a need to have a page(s) (e.g. on
lchc.ucsd.edu)
where the material is listed, organised, and described.
Abstracts of
the talks are needed, because on vimeo we have only a few
lines to
describe the content. But that page I think cannot be on
vimeo.com.
vimeo does have a blog capacity, and I think David Kellogg is
so far
the only person who has made use of it.
Were we to go down that road, issues that arise are (1)
Keeping the
information up to date as new videos are added, (2) Having the
authority to categorise and prioritise videos. At the moment,
the
other side of lack of organisation and information, is that
the vimeo
page is very egalitarian and democratic. :)
http://vimeo.com/groups/39473/videos
Andy
mike cole wrote:
Wow, Andy-- I had no idea that so many interesting videos had
already
been
collected already, and just in time for Natalia's
class!! Now THAT I
call
a bit of superb international collective action!! A well
oiled
machine, a
sleek and swift social organism.....
One question.
Might there be a way of people being able to see the list of
all the
topics
as they open the page, or a single button they could press
that
brings up
the list? As it is, people might overlook at LOT of interest,
and that
problem will just get worse as the collection becomes richer.
mike
PS_ For those who wonder what I am talking about, check out
http://vimeo.com/groups/39473/videos/15209886
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--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-------
*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Videos: http://vimeo.com/user3478333/videos
Book: http://www.brill.nl/scss
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