SYMP 139 - Continuities and disruptions in renegotiating Vygotsky’s legacy: a four-cornered debate

Four contributors enter into dialogue, each with a different perspective on Vygotsky’s legacy and its contemporary significance. Together, the papers address fundamental issues concerning the origins, development and future promise of Vygotsky’s theory: its philosophical assumptions and theoretical sources, its direction of travel, its problems, lacunae and radical growth points, changing perspectives in its reception and interpretation, and its relevance today for our efforts to build a better world. Fernando González Rey (‘Discussing new pathways on Vygotsky’s legacy: sense, perizhivanie and subjectivity’) argues for the significance of concepts in Vygotsky’s later work, including ‘sense’, ‘perizhivanie’ and ‘social situation of development’ in forging a new conception of subjectivity. Ines Langemeyer (‘The dialectics of societal, social, and psychological development: Vygotsky’s legacy’) explores the importance of Vygotsky’s dialectical insights into social and psychological change and transformation for our understanding of the development of cooperative intellectual competence in scientific and technological labour. Peter E Jones (‘Vygotsky’s legacy in prospect: to build on or to build around?’) argues that key principles of Vygotsky’s psychological theory are grounded in perspectives on language and communication which appear indefensible today and considers an alternative point of departure in the study of cooperation. Finally, Anna Stetsenko (‘Transformative onto-epistemology and its implications for expanding, revising, and renegotiating Vygotsky’s project: The relevance of subjectivity and intersubjectivity’), via a critical examination of shifting interpretations of Vygotsky’s theory, argues the necessity for a transformative onto-epistemology in grasping the core of Vygotsky’s project through its expansive critique.