Appropriating images and transforming cultural artifacts

[tishaturk]

For reasons related to teaching rather than research, I'm re-reading James Paul Gee's essay "The New Literacy Studies and the 'Social Turn'," which I have not read in many years, and in which I have just come across the following paragraph:

Sociohistorical psychology, following Vygotsky and later Bakhtin, has argued that the human mind is "furnished" through a process of "internalizing" or "appropriating" images, patterns, and words from the social activities in which one has participated. Further, thinking is not "private," but almost always mediated by "cultural tools," that is, artifacts, symbols, tools, technologies, and forms of language that have been historically and culturally shaped to carry out certain functions and carry certain meanings (cultural tools have certain "affordances," though people can transform them through using them in new settings).

It will, I suspect, surprise nobody to learn that I wrote "Vidding!" in the margin.

Comments

[f1renze]

Hee, I teach Vygotsky's theory but never really connected it to vidding. I'm in the "camp" of people who believe that cognition is shaped by these cultural tools, but of course it's (at least) a bidirectional process!

Now if I can just resist blurting out "just like vidding!" as I'm teaching this stuff in class...

[tishaturk]

I am already planning to pull this quote out of my back pocket the next time one of my social science colleagues says "Oh, whatever, it's just slapping some dumb video clips on top of some stupid pop song." It's my new rallying cry: "Vygotsky is judging you, bitches!"

[lapillus]

LOL, not surprised in the least :)

[tishaturk]

I did not expect you to be! ;)

[oracne]

OOH!

[tishaturk]

I know, right?

[concinnity]

I <3 Gee, but man am I glad we've mostly moved past using that many scare quotes. :)

[tishaturk]

I would be the first to concede that Gee uses more quotation marks than is strictly necessary, but I don't see them as scare quotes, at least not in this instance; I don't get the sense that he's being sarcastic. I assume he's simply indicating that the terminology he's using is borrowed verbatim from Vygotsky and Bakhtin and possibly Wertsch (cited in this paragraph). So, you know, quoting. *shrug*

[concinnity]

Sure - and I think Gee of all people is sensitive to quoting as such. But I do think it shows the date of the material...or maybe just something about audience expectation. Even if we're lifting directly from another author, it is more common now to say, for example: "Sociohistorical psychology, following Vygotsky and later Bakhtin, has argued that the human mind is "furnished" through a process of internalizing or appropriating images..." - expecting the audience to understand the references without drawing attention to them with quote marks.

Anyway, a minor point, probably brought on by the tons of copy editing I've been doing lately. :) Please don't late it dissuade you from posting about Gee - who is truly pretty fantastic. :)