Re: [xmca] Vygotsky vs. Bakhtin (or, The Interpersonal Is Not the Sociocultural Redux)

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

This seems generally an important set of ideas, David.  I can focus on just
one at a time and I started with this:

For the other, on the other hand, the whole thing must be turned on its
head: instead of the sociocultural emerging from the sum total of the
interpersonal, the interpersonal may only truly be made sense of as a
microcosm of the sociocultural.

*David-- If we follow Latour's logic in his article on interobjectivity in
MCA some time ago, it seems to suggest that the question you are asking is
very similar to "does the socio-cultural-historical grow out of the
phylogenetic" or vice versa. Clearly the phylogenetic preceds the
cultural-historical; the two "evolve" pari parsu with each other.* Both the
root-trunk-branch analogy and the river analogy seem apt here as various
hybrids of the phylogenetic and cultural-historical became part of a single
evolutionary process.

*The role of art in promoting a great variety of "alternative states" for
human experience, seems pretty plausible to me.*

Not at all sure what others think about any of this.
mike


On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 12:07 AM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:

> I've often puzzled over the paradox that the ostensible believer Bakhtin
> appears to deny the very possibility of the abstract absolute, while the
> ostensibly unbelieving Vygotsky clearly affirms it in his "measure of
> generality" and his work on concept formation, and above all in his
> "Psychology of Art" and on creativity.
>
> Bakhtin appears to think that existence is an endless but
> ultimately godless carnival, with the low and high constantly changing
> places. If God exists, it is largely thanks to the devil, to whom he must be
> very closely related, if not on intimate terms. On the other hand, the
> genuinely godless Jew Vygotsky thinks that Jacob's ladder was a great spiral
> staircase, and man is always headed for the Crown of Glory (that is, the
> concept) no matter how often he seems to turn in circles.
>
> It's almost as if Bakhtin believes that the mere impossiblity of God does
> nothing to lessen his reality in the Son of Man, while Vygotsky believes
> that the mere possibility of God in the mind of man suggests that he must be
> overthrown, abolished, and supplanted by the sons of men.
>
> See if you can figure out who this is:
>
> "The life situation of a suffering human being that is really experienced
> from within may prompt me to perform an ethical action, such as providing
> assistance, consolation or cognitive reflection. But in any event my
> projection of myself into him must be followed by a return into myself, a
> return to my own place outside the suffering person, for only form this
> place can the material derived from my projecting myself into the other be
> rendered meaningful ethically, cognitively, or esthetically. If this return
> into myself did not actually take place, the pathological phenomenon of
> experiencing another's suffering as one's own would result--an infection
> with another's suffering, and nothing more."
>
> And this?
>
> “Art would have a dull and ungrateful task if its only purpose were to
> infect one or many persons with feelings. If this were so, its significance
> would be very small, because there would be only a quantitative expansion
> and no qualitative expansion beyond an individual’s feeling The miracle of
> art would then by like the break miracle of the Gospel, when five barley
> loaves and two small fishes fed thousands of people, all of whom ate and
> were satisfied, and a dozen baskets were filled with the remaining food.
> This miracle is only quantitative: thousands were fed and were satisfied,
> but each of them ate only fish and bread. But was this not their daily diet
> at home, without any miracles? (…) The miracle of art reminds us much more
> of another miracle in the Gospel, the transformation of water into wine.
> Indeed, art’s true nature is that of transubstantiation, something that
> transcends ordinary feelings; for the fear, pain, or excitement caused by
>  art includes something above and beyond its normal, conventional content.”
>
> Both are attacking the Tolstoyan idea that art is a kind of disease,
> spreading emotion like a one of the plagues that Moses and Aaron visited
> upon the Pharoah. Both believe, as Brecht did, that art requires an
> objectifying move; that the tennis ball in play can never understand the
> laws of motion, and man in the grip of passion cannot really make sense of
> emotion either. (This, for me, was Spinoza's really great contribution,
> Andy!)
>
> But for one the going out and the coming back is quite enough; God goes out
> to man in the form of Christ and returns to himself in order to bestow
> perfect forgiveness. For the other, on the other hand, the whole thing must
> be turned on its head: instead of the sociocultural emerging from the sum
> total of the interpersonal, the interpersonal may only truly be made sense
> of as a microcosm of the sociocultural.
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
>
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