RE: [xmca] New Book: Zones of Proletarian Development

David, Mike,
 
Perhaps, Vygotsky's concept of 'crisis' was not exactly coincident
to the Leontiev's one. Maybe they shares a same polissemic
'semantic field', but not necessarily the same 'objectal reference'.
 
Vygotsky's crisis seems to be like a structural-dinamic actual process
imanent to dialectical revoluctionary (involution-evolution) development.
The Leontiev's crisis seems to be a secondary meaninful process that
subjects can live/feel or not, in function of especific social relations,
seems to be a kind of meta-crisis, the social-personal situational meaning
of the crisis itself, in Vygotsky's dialectical-ontological sense.
 
Maybe the first kind of crisis can not be controled and guided, even we
wish to potencialize development... the second one, I don't know...
 
It's what it seems to me.
Best wishes

Achilles
Umuarama, July 22, 2008

> Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:03:24 -0700
> From: lchcmike@gmail.com
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: [xmca] New Book: Zones of Proletarian Development
>
> Fascinating juxtaposition of Vygotsky and Leontiev on crises, David.
> From Leninism to Stalinism?
> mike
>
> On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 11:34 AM, Wayne Au <wau@exchange.fullerton.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > Yes David, thankfully, I did avoid seeking a causal connection between
> > Lenin
> > and Vygotsky!
> >
> > I just wanted to let folks know that I am lurking on this board, but
> > haven't
> > posted before due to some technical issues - hopefully Bruce and I have
> > worked out the problem.
> >
> > At any rate I am greatly flattered (and also intimidated) by the discussion
> > here about my paper (special thanks to Shirley for saying such nice things
> > in her last post and to Steve for bringing it up earlier in the year), and
> > am happy to continue the discussion 'in person' now that I can post to the
> > list.
> >
> > Some of us have also got a panel at ISCAR on Marxism and Vygotsky, so
> > hopefully we can talk more then as well.
> >
> > Wayne
> >
> > [Side Note: At the time I also wanted to post regarding peer review - since
> > I am an editor for Rethinking Schools. Our board operates as a collective,
> > and no submission is 'blind', but as many of us are present at meetings
> > offer comments and discuss every submission (including our own). So what
> > happens is we end up with a very critical collective review process - all
> > of
> > us have been teachers and expect the articles to be useful and readable for
> > teachers - and I think we have one of the most rigorous review processes
> > I've ever seen. Yet, we are a very low status journal because we aren't so
> > much interested in academic research, but in writing that classroom
> > teachers
> > feel like they can engage with. My publications in Rethinking Schools
> > certainly barely help me get tenure, and if I were at an R-1 institution,
> > they would just laugh at the prospect of taking Rethinking Schools
> > seriously.]
> >
> > Wayne Au
> > Assistant Professor
> > Department of Secondary Education
> > CSU Fullerton
> > P.O. Box 6868
> > Fullerton, CA 92834
> > Office: 714.278.5481
> > Editorial Board Member: Rethinking Schools (www.rethinkingschools.org)
> > http://ed.fullerton.edu/SecEd/Faculty/Full_Time_Faculty/Au.html
> >
> > On 7/22/08 9:48 AM, 'David Kellogg' <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > > My world history professor at University of Chicago was a guy called
> > MacNeill
> > > who wrote something called 'The Rise of the West'. That's all you really
> > need
> > > to know about world history, according to MacNeill (and all you really
> > need to
> > > know about MacNeill according to me).
> > >
> > > Anyway, one of the games he used to play to while away the long hours
> > before
> > > our final exam and his retirement was based on finding far flung
> > parallels
> > > between cultures and then explaining them. He had a few tropes for doing
> > this,
> > > but they were all unmediated; cultures learned things from other
> > cultures,
> > > usually via direct diffusion (and yet when I suggested that all the books
> > he
> > > had ever written and printed on paper were invented in China he scowled).
> > >
> > > I think that Au, thankfully, avoids this; he pretty much leaves open the
> > > question of whether the undoubted influences of Lenin's work on
> > Vygotsky's was
> > > direct or mediated. This is a wise move; they were doubtless both.
> > >
> > > But it also leaves open the question of what the mediated sources of
> > influence
> > > were, and whether there was any reciprocally mediated influence by
> > Vygotsky or
> > > Vygotsky-like thinkers on Lenin or other state leaders.
> > >
> > > An important means by which Lenin's work influenced Vygotsky was highly
> > > indirect: the Russian formalists and the futurists and the whole literary
> > > critical reaction to the romantic subjectivist view of language and
> > meaning.
> > > By the late nineteenth century, there were already two important currents
> > > arguing that, contrary to romantic ideas of inspiration and philological
> > lines
> > > of study that located meaning in texts, meaning really comes to language
> > from
> > > outside the self. Not all of these were particularly 'progressive'; T.S.
> > > Eliot, for example, argued that literary 'inspiration' is a matter of
> > building
> > > in almost imperceptible ways on a tradition that exists almost entirely
> > > outside the writer. Formalism and futurism took this to an extreme:
> > meaning
> > > comes ENTIRELY from outside the self, and Lenin's and
> > Trotsky's relationship
> > > to formalism and futurism (one of critical distance) is noticeably
> > similar to
> > > LSV's own in Psychology of Art.
> > >
> > > How did child psychology become important enough for the government to
> > issue a
> > > decree banning pedology, intelligence testing, and LSV's work? A couple
> > of
> > > months ago I read Bukharin's 'Philosophical Arabesques', one of four
> > books he
> > > wrote while awaiting execution. There is a great deal on how children
> > learn
> > > language, some of it clearly directed towards creating the idea of a
> > child who
> > > is almost entirely socio-culturally determined, a kind of human
> > counterpart to
> > > the wheat that Lysenko was creating at that time.
> > >
> > > Bukharin doesn't touch on one of the most obvious philosophical problems
> > > raised by Vygotsky's theory of child development, that is, the crisis.
> > Crises
> > > are, of course, and inevitable feature of cultural historical change
> > according
> > > to Lenin and they are equally unavoidable in child development according
> > to
> > > Vygotsky:
> > >
> > > 'Facts show that in other conditions of rearing, the crisis occurs
> > > differently. In children who go from nursery school to kindergarten, the
> > > crisis occurs differently than it does in chidren who go into
> > kindergarten
> > > from the family. However, the crisis occurs in all normally proceeding
> > child
> > > development; the age of three and the age of seven will always be turning
> > > points in devleopment: there will always be a state of things where the
> > > internal course of the childąs development will conclude a cycle and the
> > > transition to the next cycle will necessarily be a turning point. One age
> > > level is reconstructed in some way in order to allow a new stage of
> > > development to begin.' Volume Five, 1998: 295.
> > >
> > >
> > > But not according to Leontiev:
> > >
> > > 'In fact crises are not at all inevitable accompaniments of psychic
> > > devleopment it is not the crises that are inevitable but the turning
> > points or
> > > breaks the qualitative shifts in development. The crisis on the contrary
> > is
> > > evidence that a turning point or shift has not been made in time. There
> > need
> > > by no crises at all if the child's psychic devlopment does not take shape
> > > spontaneously but is a rationally controlled process, controlled
> > upbringing.'
> > > (Leontiev, A.N. (1981) Problems of the Development of the Mind. Moscow:
> > > Progress. 398-399)
> > >
> > >
> > > David Kellogg
> > > Seoul National University of Education
> > >
> > >
> > > PS:
> > >
> > > Andy:
> > >
> > > Still thinking about that post you wrote on video games and changes in
> > modern
> > > warfare. I was thinking that one of the main themes in the history plays
> > of
> > > Shakespeare is the replacement of direct kingly combat (in which the king
> > was
> > > an epic hero representing the nation) with war by proxy. Then I saw this:
> > >
> > > http://www.slate.com/id/2195751/
> > >
> > > Read and shudder!
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --- On Mon, 7/21/08, Achilles Delari Junior <achilles_delari@hotmail.com
> > >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > From: Achilles Delari Junior <achilles_delari@hotmail.com>
> > > Subject: RE: [xmca] New Book: Zones of Proletarian Development
> > > To: 'eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity' <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > > Date: Monday, July 21, 2008, 10:44 AM
> > >
> > > Thank you.
> > > Achilles.
> > >
> > >> From: s.franklin@dsl.pipex.com
> > >> Subject: Re: [xmca] New Book: Zones of Proletarian Development
> > >> Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:17:26 +0100
> > >> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > >>
> > >> Here is the Au paper.
> > >> Its great - very interesting application of Vygotsky's perspective on
> > >
> > >> learning academic and everyday concepts with Lenin's on the
> > >> imptorance of leading /teaching/instructing the revolutionary
> > >> development of the proletariat.
> > >> Shirley
> > >>
> > >> On 21 Jul 2008, at 18:07, Mike Cole wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> I agree. This looks like a REALLY relevant text to examine. Do not
> > >>> know the
> > >>> Vygotsky and
> > >
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Received on Tue Jul 22 18:54 PDT 2008