VygotskyOSU

I haven't got enough time to understand this article carefully still. But it's very interesting to see Vygotsky has an interesting in critiquing Shakespeare's work. I'm thinking whether he has special interest in general literature or just this piece of tragedy work and how he build the connection with psychological theories. It seems that there might be some different points regarding to fictional stories and real life experiences. In the story, it seems that all of the emotions are exaggerated through writer's deliberate intention. I'm wondering whether the character's psychological state is determined by Shakespeare or by he or her self.

To Vygotsky, to be or not to be, that is a unified question. My prior knowledge about Hamlet is very limited to a required reading in high school and a free ticket to the play performed by the best theatre group. I never understand why it's a great-of-all-time work. I own to the fact that I never spend time to try to understand the play and I am poor at literacy... One thing I'm sure is that I never experience emotional awareness from it. This was true until reading Vygotsky's chapter, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. I guess I am shallow at first when reading something new. I need to see the relevance or need to make sense first at the plot level. Obviously, I failed. I never see a person like Hamlet. To me, Hamlet is neither a character that exaggerates one characteristics of a real person nor a character based on a sophisticated real person. He is not even consistent. His immediate action of killing the person behind the curtain and his procrastination of...

It is a seed for me to read the original edition of Hamlet later, though it is awkward to confess that my life experience resulted in the gap between my understanding of the object - the work Hamlet - itself, and the meaning of the tragedy. From the chapter, we can know that plenty of previous literary critics traditionally interpreted the behaviors of Hamlet based on life-experiences and human nature. However, Vygotsky tried to analyze it from the play itself, such as the process of the author's creation, the structure of tragedy (elements of contradiction), and its re-creation in staging. I would not agree with the research that trying to draw psychological conclusions from imaginary characters is scientific. Any analysis cannot escape the condition that being restricted by one's experiences. What's the difference between interpreting empirical evidences and artistic works? What's the point of analyzing them? Is there a commonplace of those lines of research? ...

To be honest, it's not my first time reading Hamlet, but I don't think I understand Shakespeare's tragedy very well. I feel more related when I read Shakespeare's Sonnets than his play. I guess the reason is that I don't have a closely related experience for the stories at that time and my experience in defining a tragedy is different from what Shakespeare would like to convey. I think only when I situate myself as the hero in the play, will I be able to build the connections. It's by that time would I be the one close to his mind, and feel Hamlet's hesitation of "to be or not to be". However, I do agree with SaesByul that play can serve the role of emotional development regardless of the difference in everyone's ZPD. Even though I cannot have the spontaneous experience of people at that time as a revenger killing the king, I can somehow portrait myself as the Hamlet in contemporary society. Just like Hamlet, I feel most situations as dilemma...

Sorry, I meant post-structuralism not post-modernism! https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=415&v=6a2dLVx8THA&feature=emb_logo A video that makes the concept easy.

"We naively believe that a writer wants to ‘express’ or ‘represent’ a psychology or a character. We rack our brains about  Hamlet—did  Shakespeare really  want  to express procrastination, or did he  want  to express something else? In point of fact, however, the artist does not represent or express any such thing, for he is not concerned with psychology. Nor do we go to see  Hamlet  to study psychology."  It is i nteresting that it seems play (not children’s play as a tool for getting spontaneous concepts, but a play written from writers), is also a good tool with which we can construct or reconstruct our understandings about anything and everything in general. Depending on content or genre, we may see some range of different messages that each reader takes. It makes it more interesting to see how differently readers digest and interpret the message that particularly speaks to them. I see that though readers develop and process their...

I read Hamlet in high school, and I saw a couple of different performances after reading it, but I generally don't remember much about Hamlet. I personally feel that this week's reading, The Tragedy of Hamlet, was beyond my Zone of Proximal Development. My everyday concepts (in particular, my familiarity with Hamlet and common critiques of it) are insufficient to really wrap my head around what Vygotsky is trying to say. This chapter seems quite dry, his writing focusing, especially at the beginning, on critiques of Hamlet made by others and his critiques of their critiques. I may try to add something more substantial to my post before class tonight, but I generally had difficulty with this reading.

I have not watched or read Hamlet before but it was very interesting to read about its plot and its various interpretations. Hamlet attacks the king three times: the first time he kills Polonius by mistake; the second time he spares the king because the latter is praying; and the third time, at the end of the play, he succeeds. I personally did not think of this as procrastination per se but just the various psychological and environmental complexities we deal with. I thought it felt real and that Shakespeare built the character really well. It was not this typical "hero" who is all strong and courageous and comes in at the right moment and kills the "evil". What I love about Shakespeare plays is that he managed to bring in the gray side of humanity and individuals in general. It is not limited to black and white but focuses more on the different shades of characters and personalities. I have read Julius Caesar as well and even there the main characters, Antony, C...

Have you ever really reflected about how two persons introduced to the same piece of work (seemingly very straightforward) can have totally different interpretations of it. At times even to the extent where their interpretations do not even overlap in any way because of the very different paths they took. This goes for poems, novels and art pieces all of which I am always taken aback when I hear the interpretation given by others (very often I wonder if they are saying random things as their interpretation to make themselves sound more intelligent as my interpretation which is often either one dimensional or two dimensional sounds very inferior). I enjoyed seeing the different interpretations from the reading especially when I saw myself in the reading. My interpretation of the delays by Hamlet would be as the writer said “ If Hamlet were to kill the king immediately upon receiving the ghost’s message, the play would have to be restricted to one act. Hence, it becomes imperativ...

As I read this piece, I started to wonder about how today, we often take up a different view of literature than Vygotsky's. This is also probably because Vygotsky is looking at this as a developmental psychologist, trying to look at Hamlet in terms of the psychology of the actor that he talks of. Roland Barthes came to mind immediately, and made me think of how the author's intent disappears within the varied interpretations that can be made by readers and critics, based on their viewpoints. This frees us from interpretive tyranny. Vygotsky comments on the ambiguity of Hamlet, and says that it is a naturally constructed mystery. Discounting the views of critics who often deem Hamlet as irresolute, he says that the obscurity of the play and the way in which the device of Tragedy s drawn out within the play obscures and veils the judgments that critics make of Hamlet's character. He says that people who read the play exercise too much imagination while critiquing it, as oppos...

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in our philosophy.” (Hamlet, act 1 scene 5) I find it odd that for his dissertation Lev Vygotsky focused on the aspect of staging he deemed as less important as we discussed last week. I wonder if he came to his conclusions regarding the two types of staging after his time in graduate school was complete. At any rate, I found this piece to be tedious.  It's the first time I've felt this way when reading LV's work.  In similar style to that which we've read throughout the semester, Vygotsky spent a lot of time (around 20 of the 26 pages) reviewing the critical analyses of his contemporaries and predecessors, and then explaining why they are wrong.   It wasn't until page 21 that he came to a conclusion which aligns with my opinion as to why Hamlet is one of the greatest plays ever written.  And while he spent some time addressing the importance of the emotional aspects of characte...

From what Vygotsky mentioned about the interaction between actors's performance and audiences' reactions, I've been start thinking around the role of social culture's influences on different kinds of performance. When I first came to Edinburgh, I watched many performances in the Edinburgh's fringe festival. The interesting thing is that there are lots of different kinds of shows were showing there. But few of them could be within my understanding. I couldn't catch the points of other audiences' emotional reactions. And at that point, I began to understand why people from my grandma and grandpa generation, they love watching Jingju. It seems that different shows would certainly rouse different emotional feelings towards different group of people. However, what I couldn't understand is that the process of dealing with emotions for actors themselves. Do they necessarily need to posses similar cultural background with the audiences so as to express the chara...

The actor creates on the stage infinite sensations, feelings, or emotions that become the emotions of the whole theatrical audience. Before they became the subject of the actor’s embodiment, they were given a literary formulation, they were borne in the air, in social consciousness. I’m not exactly sure how to interpret this last sentence. The thought occurred to me: is it the actor’s responsibility to embody the emotions of a literary character in a way that is directly relatable to the audience? Surely not, right? For instance, I went to high school in a very small and rural town in Pennsylvania, almost all having the same or similar religion, the same political affiliations, what seemed to be the same or similar career paths, etc., and it was a very unpleasant experience for people who did not agree with or wish to embody these ideals (such as myself). If a theatrical performance were to be offered in the town that was too far removed from the town’s culture, yes it would be dif...

I have a long, and perhaps erroneous, connection between play, imagination, emotions, motivation, and adults. Bear with me here while I try to articulate this (alas, it would be so much easier not to type it!) Over the weekend I was watching a movie where the dog dies in the end. As I sat there crying, Jed and I wondered aloud why we do this to ourselves… We knew how this movie was going to end, the dog had to die, but we watched it anyway. Sure, there is the entertainment value of movies, but why do we choose the movies (or any form of art—books, music, theatrical productions, etc.) that we do? For me, there was a connection back to how Vygotsky described some (though not all) of the functions of play in childhood. Vygotsky discusses how, for children, play reproduces real situations and that it is actually more a manifestation of memory than it is of imagination. I find our media viewing habits or choices perhaps analogous, with the exception that adults have better imaginations so...

I asked my mum to read this piece for me because she is an actress, and I was kind of disappointed that she found it long and boring. I did explain it to her instead of making her go through all the trouble though, and I can say that it was worth it. Like a true Vygotskian, I cooperated with her (even though she didn't read 0_0) and the results, as per usual with anything Vygotsky, broke my mind. This is why I'm up at 2am writing this; because the show must go on (lol). So, let's see. When we talk of the actor, Vygotsky talks about diametrically opposite approaches to looking at the ways in which actors do their craft. He says that stage systems that look at the essence that an actor possesses that is only inherent to him is what produces a scintillating performance. A psychotechnical approach is something that looks at acting as deconstructed into the byproducts of basic mental drives. However, these two warring approaches present a fragmented view of the actor's psych...

Though my understanding of this week's reading is very limited, at least, it gave me some food for thoughts especially concerning roles of emotion either among students in learning/teaching contexts. Emotion is so central and critical characteristics of human beings that I cannot think of any way that a human being learns, grows, and develops detached from being emotional. Though cognitive aspects are also stressed in conceptual change, I believe that one's emotional arousal or state would function either as detrimental or helpful in one's learning. I thought about how 'emotion' has been used and actually taken into account as a separate construct in the educational psychology field, and came up with that social support or student engagement, along with perspective-taking all have emotional or affective subscale in conceptualizing and measuring the constructs. That being said, when we function or get triggered with any intellectual stimuli, our emotions can play r...

It is interesting to read the interpretation of performance/acting from a practical psychology perspective. The richness of life experiences is important for acting. The experience itself could be based on one's own experiences, or derived from vicarious learning. For example, an actor can not act like a fitness trainer unless he/she experienced the whole process of body-building and succeeded in a muscular look. A healthy actor cannot like a blind person until one experienced oneself to live without eyesight. Acting consists of very practical lore. I do not agree with the statement that whether one experienced the role or not is necessary for an actor's performance. Instead, acting itself is more inclined to be a skill-based and vicariously experienced creative work. The skill refers to every detailed action within the performance, it could be an eye-contact, a trembling voice, or the walking posture. An actor needs to disassemble, analyze and relate every action and discour...

While not the point of the work, I found Vygotsky’s cautions against empiricism early on in the article to be interesting.   Perhaps because it’s something that has been on my mind lately.   I’ve spent the early part of my career working on relatively large-scale quantitative research projects. They’ve been almost exclusively quantitative with a qualitative coding scheme thrown into an observation window here and some interviews thrown into a data collection timepoint there so to speak. During my first semester of this program, I feel a bit out of my depth methodologically, but have been starting to wonder if, as Vygotsky put it so well, quantitative research is in some ways “only scratching the surface” of what comprises the everyday experiences of children, parents and teachers and how those everyday experiences moderate so much of what takes place in the classroom.   Certainly general realities are captured using some of the quantitative instruments at...

“Diderot’s paradox of the actor”  As a teacher I knew I had a very similar job description to that of an actor and the classroom was my stage. I had no reservations when it was my time to perform because holding the attention of my audience was a challenge that I looked forward to at all times. “The actor creates on the stage infinite sensations, feelings, or emotions that become the emotions of the whole theatrical audience ” and for those “members of the audience” whose eyes strayed away from my acting during a great performance I quickly got them involved and adjusted to their needs as my performance had to impact their lives in every way possible. However Diderot’s paradox of the actor matched my leaving the classroom and wanting a break from my acting duties. I was the total opposite at home and in grad school as this actor just wanted to like everyone else (hiding at the back of the class) and while restoring my energy and enthusiasm for the next acting gig tomorrow starti...

I want to start off by saying that although really interesting, this week's readings seemed complex to understand. I am still not sure of certain aspects of what he says.  Diderot questions: "must the actor experience what he portrays, or is his acting a higher form of “aping,” an imitation of an ideal prototype?" It was also mentioned that theatrical performances could be a lesson that the actor learns by heart in advance.  And to answer this question, Vygotsky proposes that we also need to look at the whole rather than only looking within the actor. "The psychology of the actor is a historical and class category, not a biological category". I can understand this because I have watched and seen interviews with actors and they say that they spend hours and hours discussing and trying to understand the context of the play, background and development of the character. However, I still think that each actor brings uniqueness as well. This is because no two actors ...

Reading about play after reading the Socialist Transformation of Man really got me thinking about what Vygotsky is really trying to say through all his writing, at the very base of it. In the socialist development of man, he speaks about how the intuitive biological tendencies of primitive man, coupled with his very basic development in the social realm  are today, replaced by a hyper-complex web of social dimensions that ubiquitously rule our lives. In his piece on imagination, he talks about how our affective tendencies, which are also quite primal in a sense, reach a structured whole in our adolescence and then fade away into the background as we become more "serious, professional" individuals (haha). When talking about play, Vygotsky says that play is not something that is purely something that brings pleasure. He says that play, while often perceived to be juvenile and fanciful, it actually something that can bring a child to the zone of proximal development with everyda...