Re: Discourses, genres, and other “form fields” Re: [xmca] Vygotsky, Marx, Hegel and History

Interesting idea, tony. There seem to be several such fields interacting in
Martin's paper
and the discussion around it.
mike

On Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 11:09 AM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:

> In response not to Martin's ultimate point here, but in the preliminary
> comments on the uses being made/not made of sources:
>
> When I want to critically comment on what someone's _discourse_ SAYS in a
> discursive context without making attributions as to what they might
> personally THINK or BELIEVE, I find it useful to refer to what I'm calling
> "form fields," as discursive fields that shape meaning (analogours to
> "force fields" shaping physical time-space).
>
> See http://curricublog.org/2008/02/24/form-fields/
>
> This is not exactly what Martin's dealing with, but the notion of
> "form-fields" might have similar utility here.
>
> On Sun, 16 Mar 2008, Martin Packer wrote:
>
> > Andy,
> >
> > I can only agree with your comments. This paper is just a draft, and one
> > sign of this is the use of clumsy expressions about the relationships
> among
> > writers. I too want to avoid claims about what Marx or Vygotsky "really
> > thought," or what Vygotsky "ignored." Put a bit more clearly (perhaps; I
> > hope) what I am interested in attempting is an interpretation of
> Vygotsky's
> > texts for their relevance to our situation here and now. I'm not trying
> to
> > figure out his original intentions, or even place his work in its
> original
> > context (which I'll never know enough about). The point about class is
> that
> > we ought to pay attention to it, and in my view Vygostky's psychology
> shows
> > us a way to do so, even if he himself didn't, at least directly.
> >
> > As for your point about returning to Hegel rather than turning to
> Bourdieu,
> > what I started to do in the paper, but haven't yet finished, was suggest
> > that rather than *adding* something to Vygotsky's analysis (whether that
> > something is Bernstein, Bahktin or Bourdieu) we should instead explore
> in
> > the direction that Vygotsky himself seems to have been moving at the end
> of
> > his life: towards a concrete psychology of specific kinds of persons in
> > specific situations. Would Hegel help in such an exploration? I think
> very
> > much so.
> >
> > Martin
> >
> >
> > On 3/12/08 11:14 PM, "Andy Blunden" <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Martin,
> >> I at last found time to read
> >> <http://www.mathcs.duq.edu/~packer/Pubs/Packer<http://www.mathcs.duq.edu/%7Epacker/Pubs/Packer>06
> problems.pdf>
> >>
> >> Again, great work! Fundamentally, I completely agree with you, and your
> >> paper has given me a number of ideas that will help me in my future
> >> work. Thank you again.
> >>
> >> I hate getting into arguments about how much Marx can be blamed for how
> he
> >> is read and "what Marx really thought". I think we share an affection
> for
> >> Marx (and Hegel in my case) that dissuades us from explaining history
> in
> >> terms of theoretical errors by great people in the past. So I will
> simply
> >> not enter into that discussion.
> >>
> >> --------------------------------------
> >>
> >> But surely in criticising theorists (and it is Vygotsky's psychology we
> are
> >> concerned with) we turn principally to the social and cultural
> conditions
> >> in which they worked (the conditions of the USSR, its ruling culture
> and so
> >> on) and mediately the theoretical resources they had available through
> the
> >> reception of earlier writers in those social conditions? So the issue
> is
> >> the cultural environment which produced a certain kind of Marx and a
> >> certain kind of Hegel and at the same time a certain kind of Vygotsky,
> so
> >> to speak.
> >>
> >> Conversely, for us reading Vygotsky in the US or Australia, in the
> >> post-USSR era, we read a certain kind of Marx ( See
> http://marxmyths.org ),
> >> a certain kind of Hegel and as you point out, we see Vygotsky in a new
> >> light and we also see the issue of cultural difference and class
> >> differently. Our social and cultural conditions have produced this
> critical
> >> perspective. How? That is the question. Not just what "blinded"
> Vygotsky,
> >> where did our insight come from?
> >>
> >> So I heartily agree that it was conditions in the USSR in the wake of
> the
> >> October Revolution and the ruling conceptions of those years that
> >> conditions the view of the world through a lens in which cultural and
> class
> >> difference was seen as historical progress alone, and therefore
> basically
> >> ignored. I don't think you can say it 'came from Marx' any more than
> the
> >> "workers state" or "classless society" 'came from Marx'. These
> conceptions
> >> had their roots in the entirety of culture and were reflected in a
> specific
> >> way in Marx as well as Plekhanov, etc.
> >>
> >> So I think the standpoint for weighing this problem is primarily
> conditions
> >> in the USSR as well as the history of the development of Marxism in
> Russia
> >> up to then, on one side, and ...
> >>
> >> On the other side, the social movements that swept through the US, and
> the
> >> rest of the capitalist world in the 1950s, 60s and 70s completely
> changed
> >> the psychology of us in the west. The insights we have into
> >> cultural-blindness is the very specific product of these social
> movement.
> >> These movements did not happen in the USSR, for all intents and
> purposes.
> >>
> >> (Relevant to that I am very interested in the huge fight of Eleanor
> Marx,
> >> Dora Montefiore and others against Belfort Bax and others over the
> woman
> >> question amongst Marxists in Britain around the turn of the century.
> There
> >> were also fights over whether imperialism was a good thing for the
> >> colonies. In the decades of the 2nd International, Marxists were the
> >> leaders of the women's movement, and were up to the Suffragettes. The
> >> parting of ways, so far as I can see, comes after the Soviets became
> >> leaders of the world Communist Movement. Though I stand to be corrected
> >> here, as I have not really researched the question.)
> >>
> >> --------------------------------------
> >>
> >> A separate question.
> >>
> >> I think that because there has been no serious Hegel scholarship by
> people
> >> with a knowledge of Vygotskyan psychology, Hegel's concept of
> Subjective
> >> Spirit as opposed to Objective Spirit is usually interpreted in the
> spirit
> >> of Cartesian dualism, as if what was being referred to was an inner
> world
> >> of mental states, which was of course, the very thing that Hegel was
> >> working against. If on the contrary we see Subjective Spirit in
> contrast to
> >> Objective Spirit in terms of those relations in which an individual
> >> participates on a person-to-person basis, mediated by bodies, children,
> >> words, material labour processes, family relations, natural division of
> >> labour and so on (note that language itself is part of Subjective
> Spirit),
> >> as opposed to the domain of Right, mediated by law, science, politics,
> >> literature, art, religion, philosophy, then we have a very adequate
> >> approach to the psychology of class, cultural difference, gender
> politics
> >> and so on. I like Bourdieu, and I interpret his notion of habitus in
> the
> >> same way, but Hegel's original idea is worth looking at because of its
> >> place in our intellectual history.
> >>
> >> Andy
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> xmca mailing list
> >> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
> Tony Whitson
> UD School of Education
> NEWARK DE 19716
>
> twhitson@udel.edu
> _______________________________
>
> "those who fail to reread
> are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
> -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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Received on Sun Mar 16 13:34 PDT 2008