[xmca] Textology of "Tool and Symbol"

[David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>]

We have started translating "Tool and Symbol in Child Development" into Korean, and I have some questions about the text.
 
First of all, van der Veer and Valsiner say (in the notes on p. 170 of the Vygotsky Reader) that is was CO-AUTHORED by Luria, and that evidence to this effect can be found on p. 322 of the original 1934 edition of Thinking and Speech coedited by Kolbanovsky and Smekhova immediately after Vygotsky's death. Can anyone verify this? (It's not in the other versions.)
 
Secondly, the van der Veer and Valsiner text CUTS a number of sections from the first chapter, on the (perfectly correct) grounds that they appear verbatim in other chapters (e.g. p. 106). This makes Chapter One, which is apparently the most complete chapter, somewhat choppy. The Hall version in the Collected Works simply repeats the sections without any comment (e.g. p. 10, para 3 is repeated on p. 55, bottom para). I am a thick-headed reader, and I like redundancy, but I feel I should comment. Does anybody have any idea what I should say about it?
 
Here's a theory. Vygotsky and Luria really did write Chapter One together. They wanted to submit it as a chapter to Carl Murchison's "Handbook of Psychology", and so Vygotsky and/or Luria translated it into English. 
 
Murchison, of course, rejected it (just as publishers later rejected it when Mike Cole tried to get it published in the 1970s). Perhaps Vygotsky and/or Luria wanted to expand Chapter One into a book and publish it in the USSR? Perhaps he was or they were moving stuff from Chapter One into the other planned chapters with that in mind? 
 
I realize it's specultative (Anton will probably disapprove). But that would explain how Luria was able to hand an English manuscript to Mike in the early 1970s. It would also explain the repetitions. It would also explain why Chapter One occupies over a third of a book of five chapters. And it would also explain why Vygotsky refers to the manuscript as a co-authorship with Luria in the first edition of Мышление и речь. If he does!
 
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education 



__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca