(S1,Ep23) Development and Danger: the importance of neoformations

Using art, David Kellogg grounds a conceptual discussion of "neoformations" through an extended focus on a single line of development (negation) and its varied and accompanying neoformations. This conversation features David's recent translation of Vygotsky's Pedological Works, cross-cultural challenges of developmental education, and ideas for navigating a dangerous world. (First published May 22, 2021)

Highlights include:

1:42 - knowing vs. owning a word: Ant's background and aims for the discussion

4:38 - Another interesting word: What is the Synopticon?

6:15 - Yet another: переплетение (intertwining) -- and lace-making (Vermeer's "The Lace Maker")

9:42 - Pedology: a "murdered" science studying the unity of mind/body development

13:24 - Reminder: the map is not the territory

18:30 - Real problems in a dangerous world -- "the crisis of no" (Netscher's "The Lacemaker")

24:29 - Real problems, cont. - "the crisis of no" in Korea (mind, body, culture)

31:54 - When education is not a game (tricky problems and tragic consequences)

33:18 - Unplanned break (due to power outage)

33:22 - Theory picks up where metaphor stops; Vygotsky concurs

35:30 - Trying to understand neoformations using metaphor

38:50 - Limits of the thread metaphor

43:31 - Where are neoformations located?

49:40 - Consulting Vygotsky in times of crisis

51:56 - More types of neoformations - critical and stable ones

55:38 - What is picked apart and rethreaded? More cool examples

59:03 - Unraveling the social situation of development: the environment/child meeting point

1:05:02 - Visualizing 'thread patterns' within and between people (Halliday and Vygotsky)

1:12:14 - Answers without questions: potpourri (Ant's mic stopped working)

“. . . with each new epoch, the design must be picked apart and the old materials reknitted in a new way into a new form” - Unraveling Some Threads (early draft) - http://tiny.cc/t4xxtz

"I think teaching children to say no - when they're not really sure what they are saying no to - teaching children to say no to adults is kind of the most concrete, most specific, most practical way of thinking about developmental crises. And in fact, when we go back over the developmental crises that Vygotsky was talking about, we see that "No" plays a very important role." - 23:20