Re: [xmca] John Shotter in 1995 discussing the link between Wittgenstein and Vygotsky

[Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>]

Thank you Larry for providing the Shotter article on Vygotsky and 
Wittgenstein. I just want to share a few observations on it. I must 
qualify these comments by noting that I am never sure how much I am 
talking about Wittgenstein and how much about Shotter.

Firstly, the article makes it very clear that the subject matter of 
Wittgenstein’s work is speech taken very much as a part of activity, 
both in the sense of extended projects (the metaphor about a city and 
its districts) and in the sense of actions, directed and constituted by 
speech; that for Wittgenstein, texts unconnected with activity would 
indeed be meaningless, and activity without talk inconceivable. This is 
very helpful for me, because generally, those I have come across in the 
past who use Wittgenstein, use him in a universe of texts, divorced from 
activity, but it seems that this does not come from Wittgenstein himself.

Secondly, in the remarks about the need to be attentive to what is going 
on in and around speech, and the “unnoticed features of our own conduct” 
it seems to me that the kind of work that Wittgenstein has done does 
function to sensitise us to these “background” and unnoticed actions and 
contexts which are in fact giving meaning to what is said. Goethe, with 
his “delicate empiricism” would approve. How else would one write so as 
to sensitise people to this unnoticed conduct? Shotter has drawn our 
attention to the value of this work. And also, there are a lot of points 
of synergy between Wittgenstein and Vygotsky, that is clear.

That said, a couple of points on the other side. When Shotter says: 
“For, if /‘every sign by itself seems dead... [and only] in use [is it] 
alive... ‘/ (Wittgenstein, 1953, no.432), then it is no use us searching 
(as we have done in structural linguistics) for a word’s meaning in 
terms of its function or role within a closed system of formal and 
decontextualized sign type-to-sign type relationships.” Then the words 
jump out at me “as */we/* have done in structural linguistics.” So 
Shotter identifies himself as a structural linguist, or maybe a reformed 
structural linguist, addressing other structural linguists, and 
basically telling about this radical stuff he has discovered in Vygotsky 
and Wittgenstein. Shotter writes well and he does justice to these 
writers but this is the occasion of the article – a structural linguist 
telling others about what Vygotsky and Wittgenstein have to offer. All 
well and good of course.

But this leads to some shortcomings. A little way in, Shotter mentions 
“context” and points to the importance of context, presumably because 
structural linguists have neglected context. But coming from Cultural 
Psychology, this begs the question! People have spent lifetimes not just 
discovering context, but trying to figure out how to theorise context in 
psychology. Likewise with “joint action.” No cultural psychologist needs 
to be told about the importance of joint action, but what constitutes 
“joint” and what kind of “jointness”? If I work for my boss, is that 
“joint action”? Am I doing “joint action” with my audience when I write? 
If so, are the audience and my boss in the same relationship to me? What 
I am saying is that it is not enough to make gestures to jointness and 
context but we have to work out how to theorise these relations. That is 
the whole point.

Another point I want to make. I am not sure if this is Shotter or 
Wittgenstein, but I think the dichotomy between institutional life and 
everyday life is a false dichotomy. There may be many reasons for 
rejecting this dichotomy, but in particular there seems to be an 
assumption that while the life of one institution is different from that 
of another, everyday life is everywhere and always the same. If only! 
Cultural psychology deals with the obvious fact that everyday life is 
highly differentiated, heterogeneous and dynamic. And what is the source 
of everyday life? In the main yesterday’s institutional life. And what 
is the source and foundation of institutional life? Everyday life. The 
two can only be understood through the mutual tranformation onf one into 
the other.

Another observation: what marks Vygotsky off from Wittgenstein or 
Bakhtin so far as I know, is that Vygotsky was building a scientific 
psychology, his observations were supported by experiment and he 
exhaustively studied child development and pathology, and through this 
constructive work, developed a nuanced understanding of thinking and 
speaking which I personally think is inaccessible to any philosophy, 
Bakhtin and Wittgenstein included. Wittgenstein is useful for critical 
purposes, but I cannot see how one could go from Wittgenstein to build a 
psychology, except by wrapping him up with someone else.

Enough said for the moment, I think.


Andy
Larry Purss wrote:
> I have not yet read the article I'm attaching but when I googled [Shotter
> XMCA] this article was located.  I looked at the bibliography and did not
> see Merleau-Ponty referenced.  His engagement with M-P's ideas must have
> come after 1995 [when he wrote the article I'm attaching.] For others
> interested in this line of inquiry I thought the article may be interesting.
> In the more recent article I was discussing John says he has moved from
> using the term "joint activity" to the term "dialogue" and most recently to
> using the term "chiasmic intertwining".  I'm wondering what others  think
> about John's journey of exploration and how it links up to CHAT?
>
> Larry
>
> Larry
>   
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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Joint Editor MCA: 
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g932564744
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Book: http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=34857
MIA: http://www.marxists.org

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