Revisionist Revolution in Vygotsky Studies: The State of the Art PDF
Preview Revisionist Revolution in Vygotsky Studies: The State of the Art
REVISIONIST REVOLUTION IN VYGOTSKY STUDIES This page intentionally left blank REVISIONIST REVOLUTION IN VYGOTSKY STUDIES Edited by Anton Yasnitsky and Ren é van der Veer First published 2016 by Routledge 27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Anton Yasnitsky and Ren é van der Veer The right of Anton Yasnitsky and Ren é van der Veer to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Yasnitsky, Anton, 1972– Revisionist revolution in Vygotsky studies / Anton Yasnitsky and René van der Veer. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Vygotskii, L. S. (Lev Semenovich), 1896–1934. 2. Psychologists–Soviet Union. I. Veer, Ren? van der, 1952– II. Title. BF109.V95Y37 2015 150.92–dc23 2015003746 ISBN: 978-1-138-88730-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-92969-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-71424-0 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Out of House Publishing Gott ist tot. Friedrich Nietzsche Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them … Exodus 20:4–5 Science is rooted in the will to truth. With the will to truth it stands or falls. Lower the standard even slightly and science becomes diseased at the core. Not only science, but man. The will to truth, pure and unadulterated, is among the essential conditions of his existence; if the standard is compromised he eas- ily becomes a kind of tragic caricature of himself. Max Wertheimer This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Foreword: how to reconstruct deconstructions x ii Acknowledgements xvii PART I Contexts and people 1 1 The archetype of Soviet psychology: from the Stalinism of the 1930s to the “Stalinist science” of our time 3 Anton Yasnitsky Psychoneurological disciplines in the Soviet Union in the 1920s 4 Soviet psychology as a “Stalinist science” from the 1930s to our time 7 Archetype of contemporary Russian psychology (1990s–2010s): a sketch for a portrait 15 (1) Centralization and control 16 (2) Cliquism and patronage 18 (3) Ritualism 19 (4) Gap between theory and practice 2 1 (5) Intellectual and linguistic isolationism 22 (6) Cultism and hagiographies 2 3 Revisionist Vygotskian narrative rewritten against the background of the history of “Stalinist science” 25 viii Contents 2 Unity in diversity: the Vygotsky–Luria circle as an informal personal network of scholars 27 Anton Yasnitsky The “school of V ygotsky–Leontiev–Luria” narrative 27 The Vygotsky–Luria circle as informal personal network 29 Phase one (1924–1927): prehistory of the Vygotsky–Luria circle 32 Phase two (1927–1931): Vygotsky–Luria circle formation 35 Phase three (1931–1934): Vygotsky–Luria circle and the beginning of specialization and separation (Moscow–Kharkov–Leningrad) 39 Phase four (1934–1936): the circles of V ygotskians and disintegration of the original research program 41 Phase fi ve (1936–1941): the beginning of the “Vygotsky–Leontiev–Luria school” 4 4 3 Deconstructing Vygotsky’s victimization narrative: a re-examination of the “Stalinist suppression” of Vygotskian theory 5 0 Jennifer Fraser and Anton Yasnitsky Deconstructing the narrative of the “Vygotsky ban” 51 Why the narrative of the “Vygotsky ban” is problematic 56 Operationalizing “offi cial” bans: the mechanics of Soviet censorship 58 Vygotsky’s declining publication rate: multiple meanings? 60 Pedology as a possible culprit: the 1936 decree 63 Vygotsky’s posthumous legacy and the many meanings of the ban 65 PART II Texts and legacy 7 1 4 Vygotsky the published: who wrote Vygotsky and what Vygotsky actually wrote 7 3 Ren é van der Veer and Anton Yasnitsky English-language publication record 75 Vygotsky’s published psychological works of 1924–1936: general overview 76 The case of Thinking and speech (1934) 79 Vygotsky’s self-assessment 80 Vygotsky’s autobiographic offi cial documents and publications 82 Vygotsky’s private documents and correspondence 83 “The lost works” 89 Conclusion: Vygotsky’s foundational works 91 Contents ix 5 Vygotsky the unpublished: an overview of the personal archive (1912–1934) 9 4 Ekaterina Zavershneva The main reasons to study Vygotsky’s personal archive 94 General characteristics of the personal notes 9 6 Outside appearance and degree of preservation 96 Special characteristics of the work with Vygotsky’s notes 96 The most important archival documents: series of notes, exercise books and notebooks, separate notes, letters 97 Notes from the years 1912–1930 98 Exercise books and notebooks 98 Various notes 1 04 Letters 106 Notes from 1930 to 1934 107 Series of documents 109 The notebooks 118 Scattered notes 121 Letters 125 Vygotsky’s last note 125 6 “The way to freedom”: Vygotsky in 1932 127 Ekaterina Zavershneva The plan for the unwritten book O n the question of the study of consciousness 1 28 Remarks about the psychophysical problem 135 Propositions for the talks by Vygotsky’s collaborators 137 PART III Holism and transnationalism 141 7 Translating Vygotsky: some problems of transnational Vygotskian science 1 43 Ren é van der Veer and Anton Yasnitsky A transnational history of Vygotsky in context 144 The French connection 146 Anglo-Saxon ties: a Cold War story 1 48 The transnational Vygotskian network in action 151 Typology of V ygotsky’s texts and sources of error 160 Types of error 161 Inaccuracies 162
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