[xmca] material intersubjective and subjective

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

The conversation between Anna Sfard and Andy is very thought provoking and
appreciated.  I have been reading Anna Stetsenko's articles that I've
accessed many articles downloaded from a google search = [Stetsenko Anna]

Her project to highlight the subjective dimension of activity is where my
deep curiosity lies.  A chapter of a book [Critical Psychology] titled
"Vygotskian Collaborative Project of Social Transformation: History,
Politics and Practice in Knowledge Construction" (co-authored with Igor
Arievitch; date not listed) furthers her project.

She has an interesting distinction she makes between Marxist, Vygotskian,
and Activity projects between the material, intersubjective, and subjective
dimensions of historical/human development.  On page 65 she quotes,

"However, whereas Marx focused primarily on the dynamics, contradictions
within, and transformations between material production of human existence,
on the one hand, and the emerging collective forms of its regulation,
(i.e.,human society) - on the other, Vygotskian project addressed two other
forms of interdependency critical for human development.
     Specifically, Vygotsky focused on exploring the functioning and
transformations between the societal and the individual forms of human life,
relatively (and inevitably) neglected in Marxist philosophical and
economical analyses.  The IDEA that became pivotal for Vygotsky was that the
social exchanges between people were at the foundation of all
intra-psychological processes, as the latter ones originate from the
intersubjective ones in both the history of civilization and of individual
life (cf. the famous law of development, Vygotsky, 1999).  For Vygotsky, the
transitions from inter-subjective to intra-subjective psychological
processes, by means of cultural mediation became the FOCUS OF ANALYSIS.
Leontiev and other colleagues of Vygotsky focused relatively more on how the
material forms of activity and practice are transformed into
intra-psychological processes (in what became termed 'activity theory')
(bold is my emphasis)

END OF QUOTE

I find this 3 part framework helpful when reading the posts on concepts,
systems, and communication. By juxtaposing how Stetsenko sees these various
projects linked it allows me to have a broader and more focused perspective
of the various projects and the contrasting explicit emphasis in each
approach to human and historical development.

  From my perspective, Anna Sfard's emphasis on "communication" [more
general than discourse or dialogue] is focusing  on linking and
understanding  the same inter-subjective  to intra-psychological
transformational process through collaboration.  I would add Buber's notion
of "confirmation" to the concept of transformative collaboration.

Larry
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