[xmca] Fernando Rey comment

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Hi All--

Below is exchange with Fernando to whom I have forwarded comments as life
permits. He is having difficulty
getting into xmca so please cc him on relevant comments.
My response with request to post his comment below

Please reply ALL to this thread so that Fernando is kept in the loop until
he can work out connectivity.
mike

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>

To: Fernando Luis Gonzalez Rey <gonzalez_rey49@hotmail.com>


Hi Fernando-

I hope you will allow me to post this note on XMCA. I can understand your
feelings
when members of xmca are critical of someone's work. You are not alone, all
of
us have encountered sharp objections to our ideas, our interpretations, of
the
Russian/Soviet legacy in psychology.

I realize from your note that in our attempt to be as international as
possible, we do not realize that different national traditions are
positioned differently with respect to
this entire circle of ideas, about the fundamentally, culturally mediated,
nature of the human being. We assume we have more in common in our
background knowledge than is true. That (wrong) assumption shifts
unhelpfully, the conversation in what seems like an overly critical
response.

For example, I assume that the vast majority of people who contribute to
xmca discourse are fully in agreement with your emphasis on aspects that the
dominant cognitivist view of vygotsky does not take sufficiently into
account. But your readership on xmca is NOT any "dominant cognitivist view."
We, who have lived a long through
both the historical and the intellectual issues, from very different
positionalities are "out of synch" not only with each other, but with the
times.

There has been a long running discussion on XMCA that has centered around
issue you raise. Perhaps Pedro would give us permission to make your other
article available so that the discussion could continue in a productive way.
Print publication is simply inadequate to the task. We have not been
intelligent about use of the new media.

Nichevo ne podelaish.

First, then, can I post your note to xmca to continue the discussion? As a
rule people RELPY ALL to xmca posts, and you were cc'ed at the beginning,
but cc
dropped out along the way. The threads routinely get tangled. I that's life.
:-)

Dos Abracos.
mike


On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Fernando Luis Gonzalez Rey <
gonzalez_rey49@hotmail.com> wrote:

>  Mike, thank you for sending me some of the comments ! I have just returned
> for a month in which I was in some central american countries and finally I
> was one week in Cuba where the communication in internet out of some
> institutions is impossible. Mike is interesting how people offer resistance
> to read something that goes in a different direction of what they think. In
> relation to my paper I clarify that this is not an attempt of
> peridiozation, but an attempt to point out certain groups of interrelated
> ideas which from my view were very interesting and frequently overlooked in
> relation to Vygotsky's thought. Even in the moments remarked by me there
> were other writings of Vygotsky which took another completely different
> direction. Second , I never split Vygotsky from Marxism. I emphasized the
> tension between an attempt to develop an objective psychology, something
> that is clear in many different fragments throghout Vygotsky's work and his
> sensitivity for posing on the table many different ideas addressed to a new
> comprehension of a psychical system through which is possible to see new
> alternatives in his thinking that up to now had received a little attention
> not only in Western countries but also in Russia. I have a new paper in
> preparation in which I attempt to show some of the historical facts that
> influenced the path of Soviet psychology, but to enter in an analysis about
> the different historical, institutional , theoretical and institutional
> facts influenced on the movement of Vygotsky's ideas in my paper was simply
> impossible. From my view to made explicit those ideas on which I
> characterized the moments I defended in the paper is a step ahead in the way
> Vygotsky has been interpreted because this interpretation permits to enter
> in other parts of his legacy through which it is possible advance on new
> topics in a cultural historical approach.Another question to which Blunden
> reacted so affectively was my definition of the Vygotsky objectivistic
> turn. I clarified that The crisis... went in another direction even when it
> was written in 1927.But this is eplicitly remarked in my text! The
> contradictory character of Vygotsky's work is widely konwn, even zinchenko
> has pointed out this idea in several moments. Onen central idea in my paper
> is emphasized the role of emotions, fantasy, and other subjective processes
> and psyuchical formations in Vygotsky's work, a fact that practically non
> one has commented, despite that continues to be dominant a
> cognitive interpretation about Vygotsky legacy !  . In regards to the
> quotation that Veresov put in doubt I will bring a copy of Vygotsky's
> original text to Rome.Did you read my chapter in Vygotsky in 21 century.
> edited by Portes and Salas Spencer ? As I commented you new questions are
> emerging in the historical analysis of Soviet psychology, there are a lot of
> interesting topics which are discussed at this moment in Russian psychology
> which undoubtedly we have to take into account in our actual
> interpretations about soviet psychologists. I expect to meet you in Italy
> and also to have the opportunity to discuss with some of the
> colleagues who take part in the MCA discussion.  Un abrazo grande,
> Fernando
>  ------------------------------
> From: lchcmike@gmail.com
> Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2011 12:14:19 -0700
> Subject: Fwd: [xmca] RE: xmca Digest, Vol 75, Issue 6, Bladeless Knives
> Without Handles (David Kellogg) (mike cole)
> To: gonzalez_rey49@hotmail.com
>
>
> Fernando. Here is a comment. I am not sure if you have joint xmca but you
> should!!
> mike
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *Nikolai Veresov* <nveresov@hotmail.com>
> Date: Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 10:09 AM
> Subject: [xmca] RE: xmca Digest, Vol 75, Issue 6, Bladeless Knives Without
> Handles (David Kellogg) (mike cole)
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hi Nick-- What are your ideas about Fernando's paper?
> > mike
>
> Mike,
>
> Here are some of my thoughts on the paper by Gonzales Rey.
>
> 1. There are some interesting points in the paper, such as the idea of
> a “generative character of human psyche”, and the concept of sense. .
>
> 2. I found what I felt were several inaccuracies in the interpretation  of
> the Vygotsky’s texts quoted by the author. A
> typical example:  “in one of his chapters,
> Vygotsky identified Marxist psychology as being part of objective
> psychology,
> which also included other theoretical approaches such as behaviourism” (p.
> 259).
> In this Chapter, which is Chapter 1 of the Psychology of Art, p 19 in the
> English translation ,), Vygotsky says that American behaviourism, German
> Gestalt psychology, reflexology and Marxist psychology are ATTEMTS which
> are led
> by the general tendency of the psychology to the objectivism (see also the
> first page of Psychology of Art). He means that  psychology is searching
> for  an objective method. I do not intepret this as
> an identification of Marxist psychology (together with other theoretical
> approaches) as being part of objective psychology. These approaches do not
> constitute  objective psychology as its
> parts. I can give at least a dozen other examples of such inaccuracies in
> this
> paper.
>
> 3. The author presents  a new periodization
> of the development of Vygotsky’s thought. However,  in doing this it would
> have made sense for the
> author to make clear why he thinks this is needed.  In other words, it
> should be somehow
> explained what is wrong in existing periodisations made by other
> researchers,
> or at least what is not taken into account. I found nothing about this in
> the
> article. Second, periodisation  if not
> done appropriately can be a superficial description of the periods and
> moments
> of development  One  could create a hundred different periodisations
> of Vygotsky’s thought on this basis. Periodisation makes sense if it opens
> and
> explains the grounds, the reasons and moving forces (contradictions) which
> led
> to the transition from one stage of development of thought to another. Why
> did Vygotsky
> move from the “first moment” to the “second moment” and then to the third
> one?
> What caused him to do this? Was there a logic to the development of his
> thought
> and in his changing of his views? What was wrong or incomplete in the first
> “moment”
> and what caused him to change the whole approach twice? Without this, the
> periodisation is nothing more than a superficial description of periods,
> transitions and “moments”. Description is important,  but an explanation of
> these transitions is
> required to make a periodisation valid as a tool of understanding. This
> requires deep knowledge of Vygotsky’s texts, this requires deep comparative
> analysis of the concepts and terminology, this requires the careful
> restoration
> of various lines in development of Vygotsky’s thoughts. So it is not an
> easy
> task. The author does not offer any explanations for the grounds for these
> transitions.
>  He just indicates three moments and
> describes them.
>
> 5. In my view, the legacy of Vygotsky is deeper and wider than just
> cultural-historical
> theory, as the author claims. Yet, I do not see any novelty in this
> assertion.
> Some of Vygotsky’s ideas, according to the author, remain undiscovered and
> underestimated. Here again I do not see any novelty. Recent papers by
> Zavershneva (unfortunately the author does not demonstrate his acquaintance
> with them, despite his knowledge of Russian) bring new light to the periods
> of
> Vygotsky’s theoretical evolution. Her articles are based on new materials
> from
> Vygotsky’ archive, which have remained unknown for a long time.  As I
> understand them, these materials
> contradict the author’s description of Vygotsky’s three moments or
> periods.   This might be an interesting the topic for future
> discussion.
>
> Nikolai Veresov
>
>
>
>
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>
>
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