Guest editorial

History of the Human Sciences

2015, Vol. 28(2) 3–7
Vygotsky in his, our ª The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0952695115577691
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Gordana Jovanović
University of Belgrade, Serbia

A reliance on external tools as mediators of mental processes is very much in the spirit of
Lev Semenovich Vygotsky’s theoretical outlook. The 80th anniversary of his early death
in 1934 is taken here as a sign stimulus that can invoke new reflections on his legacy,
especially in view of the fact that his ideas have in the meantime spread across disci-
plines world-wide. At the same time not only are our inherited reception narratives fac-
ing questioning, but the very basic concepts of our understanding of the world – concepts
of the subject, of truth, of development, and of history itself – have been challenged. The
rapid and dramatic socio-political changes of the last decades have brought about new
challenges which have almost at the same time opened up and spread new possibilities
and shaken trust in patterns of thinking and acting not only dominant in our contempo-
rary world but even recommended as the best solutions to the historical problems of
humankind. This was the broad framework within which the invitation to reflect anew
on Vygotsky’s ideas was sent and – fortunately enough – widely accepted.
The life and intellectual trajectories of Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1896–1934)
exemplify in a symbolically striking way the main tenet of his theory, the prevalence
of the cultural over the biological in human lives. First, his very short biological life and
early death at the age of only 38 did not prevent him from producing quite an impressive
oeuvre, of which there still remains a lot of unpublished material. His post-biological
destiny, i.e. the reception of his ideas, shows polycentric and polysemantic features
which are only growing over time.
The 80th anniversary of Vygotsky’s death is taken first as an invitation to listen more
carefully to the questions he asked and the answers he offered, mostly – but not only – in
psychology. Eighty years is a time unit which approximately fits human life expectancy
nowadays, though Vygotsky would have needed more than two of his lives to reach it.

Corresponding author:
Gordana Jovanović, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Psychology, University of Belgrade, Cika Ljubina
18–20, Belgrade 11000, Serbia.
Email: gorda.jovanovic@gmail.com
4 History of the Human Sciences 28(2)

What has this time span of a human life brought about with regard to Vygotsky’s psy-
chological and scientific ideas and, more generally, with regard to his worldview?
The purpose of this special issue is to offer a historical contextualization of the emer-
gence of Vygotsky’s theory in the first decades of the revolutionary Soviet Union, of the
changes in its reception in the Soviet Union and the vicissitudes of its reception in a western
context, including also the kind of globalization it has been experiencing in recent decades.
Possible lines of further development of the Vygotskian approach are also discussed.
Special attention is devoted to new scholarship related to the intellectual context in
which Vygotsky developed his psychological theory. This provides a new framework
within which to raise once more the question about the Marxist legacy in Vygotsky’s the-
ory. It is proposed to deconstruct the question rather than repeat the old battle between
the Marxist and non-Marxist Vygotsky. In what aspects of his theorizing was Vygotsky a
Marxist thinker (his historical approach to human subjectivity, including scientific the-
orizing, has evident Marxist roots)? In what other aspects was he indebted to alternative
philosophical orientations – that of Spinoza, for example? As far as an understanding of
language was concerned, Vygotsky obviously relied more on other traditions (for exam-
ple, that of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Gustav Gustavovich Shpet).
A more general question to be raised concerns the extent to which Vygotsky’s theory
is a product of the specific revolutionary historical conditions in the Soviet Union. Can
we apply an approach developed by the sociology of knowledge more or less at the same
time (i.e. Karl Mannheim in the late 1920s) to an understanding of Vygotsky’s way of
theorizing in relation to specific social conditions?
Can we retrospectively come to a better understanding of how it happened that a the-
ory trying to apply a Marxist approach and Marxist categories to psychology was banned
in a society officially committed to Marxism? Surprising as it might be, this very ques-
tion has been recently replaced by another: was Vygotsky’s theory banned at all? The
questioning of the claims about the suppression of Vygotsky’s theory in the Soviet Union
has recently grown to such an extent that it could almost be seen as a revisionist
movement.
Have the radical social system changes in Russia, following the collapse of socialism,
opened new interpretive possibilities - beyond the rediscovery of some repressed or for-
gotten authors (like G. Shpet, for example)? Or rather, have these changes made impos-
sible an understanding of the deepest sense of Vygotsky’s ideas?
As far as the reception of Vygotsky’s ideas in a western context is concerned, it was
his conception of language that first aroused interest. Generally speaking, the semiotic
interpretation of Vygotsky’s theory has prevailed over an historical interpretation.
Given the overall discursive turn toward the notion of interaction and taking into
account the strong explanatory status of interaction in Vygotsky’s theory, an important
question to be raised relates to the theoretical functions of interactionism. What role had
interactionism in Vygotsky’s theory and in the social context of his theorizing? What
role has interactionism in the reception of Vygotsky’s ideas both in a western context
and in a more globalized context? What are the consequences of a discursive replace-
ment of society by interactions?
Lastly, some possible future paths for the development of the Vygotskian approach
are examined in the light of the postmodern shifts toward the dissolution of the social
Jovanović 5

itself and changes in semiotic regimes which favor signs and which neglect and mar-
ginalize referents. Can Vygotsky’s modernist worldview overcome such postmodern
challenges?
It is only since 1962, when a selection of adapted Vygotsky’s texts appeared under the
title Thought and Language (excerpted from his Myshlenie i rech of 1934) that Vygotsky
started to become available to an English-speaking audience, a development that secured
his international reception. In his introduction to ‘this powerful and original book’ Jer-
ome Bruner wrote: ‘[G]iven a pluralistic world where each comes to terms with the envi-
ronment in his own style, Vygotsky’s developmental theory is also a description of the
many roads to individuality and freedom. It is in this sense, I think, that he transcends, as
a theorist of the nature of man, the ideological rifts that divide our world so deeply
today.’ Meanwhile, half a century later, the old ideological rifts have become replaced
by other, even deeper, divisions which can be witnessed in all spheres of life.
Nevertheless, Vygotsky’s ideas continued to spread and they have indeed reached all
parts of the world and many disciplines. His collected works have been available – in
Russian since the 1980s, in English translation since the late 1980s, and even in Serbian
since the 1990s. His selected writings were published in German translation in the 1980s,
in Spanish in the 1990s. There are translations of his writings in many other languages.
Many, many books have been devoted to different aspects of his theory. And it seems
that the interest in Vygotsky is still very lively. Here are just a few examples: a special
issue of Early Education and Development (14[3] [2003]): ‘Vygotskyan Perspectives in
Early Childhood Education: Translating Ideas into Classroom Practice’. Or a special
issue dedicated to the thought of Vygotsky, published by the University of Costa Rica
in 2009. Or a special issue on Vygotsky’s legacy in PsyAnima, Dubna Psychological
Journal (4 [2011]). In Vygotsky’s anniversary year The Cambridge Handbook of
Cultural-Historical Psychology, edited by Anton Yasnitsky, René van der Veer and
Michel Ferrari, also appeared.
The current special issue is meant to contextualize Vygotsky in his, our and future
times. It is oriented toward theoretical reflection on essential features and concepts of
his theorizing – historicity, holism, mediation, generalization. Contributions transcend
the disciplinary borders of psychology, as the work of Vygotsky himself did. On the
other hand, the issue includes reconstructions of the historical context of the emergence
and reception of Vygotsky’s ideas, both in his home country which itself underwent
many waves of radical changes, in a western country (the Italian case), and what is prob-
ably most challenging – in both parts of the once divided Germany, or rather in-between
West and East Germany.
The issue is introduced by some reflections by Jerome Bruner on ‘the compelling sub-
ject of ‘‘culture and mind’’’, on ‘how psychology turned toward cultural explication’.
Vygotsky’s theory is seen as having made essential contributions to that subject, but
on the other hand, as Bruner claims, it was itself influenced by a ‘worldwide cultural
change’ taking place during Vygotsky’s life. Nevertheless, it took more than a half century
after Vygotsky’s death before the program of a cultural psychology became articulated in
the 1990s. As Bruner’s reflections combine in nuce both theoretical and historical aspects
of an approach to Vygotsky’s work, they provide an excellent introduction to the two main
strands in this special issue.
6 History of the Human Sciences 28(2)

Following Bruner’s introductory reflections, the issue contains two types of contribu-
tions: thematic and historical. The thematic contributions deal with a range of topics in
Vygotsky’s theory, some of which have been already discussed among Vygotskian scho-
lars and some rather neglected or quite marginalized. What they have in common, in
spite of the differences, is their central role in Vygotsky’s theorizing.
In the reception of Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory, the very concept of history
(and the historical) has, strangely enough, been neglected. In order to shed some light
on this constitutive aspect of Vygotsky’s theorizing, the ‘vicissitudes of history’ in
Vygotsky are discussed in the opening article by Gordana Jovanović. Within this frame-
work the question of Vygotsky’s Marxism is raised and it is argued that in conceptualiz-
ing history Vygotsky adopted both valuable Marxist insights and also some historical
shortcomings of Marxism (the prevalence of an objectivist instrumental approach at
the expense of a more communicative-hermeneutic one). But the importance of the
inclusion of a broad historical perspective on psychological theorizing cannot be
overestimated.
In contributions addressing the notions of holism (Carlos Cornejo) and mediation
(Harry Daniels and Vladimir Petrovich Zinchenko) attempts have been made to contex-
tualize these issues in broader historical, philosophical and sociological frameworks. As
a result Vygotsky’s theory appears both more historically and philosophically laden
(Cornejo), indebted to the historical legacy of Spinoza, Romanticism, Lotze and Gestalt
psychology, but at the same time in need of an ‘expansion of the socio-cultural gaze’, i.e.
of a further, first of all sociologically informed and specified ‘development and expan-
sion’ of the principle of mediation (Daniels) – ‘If we are to gain more control of our his-
tories and ourselves we need to develop better tools with which to scrutinize what will
otherwise remain invisible’.
On the other hand, Zinchenko, who unfortunately passed away before this issue was
completed, relied on insights into fundamental levels of immediacy as an indispensable
feature of human experience that a psychological theory needs to acknowledge.
The contributions by Jaan Valsiner and René van der Veer focus on Vygotsky’s art
theory and activity, offering both new insights and reference to material hitherto rather
not very well known. What is very important is that Valsiner and van der Veer show how
Vygotsky’s art concepts and activities are linked to fundamental problems of his general
psychological theory.
The other group of papers deals with different historical contexts – of the emergence
of Vygotsky’s theory (Kirill Maslov), its reception in the Soviet Union (Jennifer Fraser
and Anton Yasnitsky), in Italy (Luciano Mecacci) and in West and East Germany (Alex-
andre Métraux). Beyond the usually simplified picture of the context in which Vygotsky
developed his ideas, Maslov depicts a much more complicated and historically laden pic-
ture of the changing position of the intelligentsia in Russia. All the contributions to this
special issue have in common insights into the very complicated political and social pro-
cesses, under which Vygotsky’s ideas were developed and received. Mecacci and
Métraux also offer reports on their own experiences in the spread of Vygotsky’s ideas
(Mecacci’s research stay sojourning in Moscow in the 1970s, Métraux’s involvement
in the publication of the German translations of Vygotsky as a joint West–East Germany
project). Fraser’s and Yasnitsky’s contribution is part of a revisionist account of
Jovanović 7

Vygotsky’s reception in the Soviet Union, aiming at a deconstruction of the victimiza-

tion narrative which claimed that Vygotsky’s theory was repressed for decades after his
death.
The composition of the contributions to this special issue can be seen not only as rep-
resenting the current international reception of Vygotsky’s ideas, but also as demonstrat-
ing that the reception of a scholar’s work is always a relational process. Reception is an
outcome of the fusion of the horizons of the recipients with the horizon of the work. As
with any other hermeneutic achievement, it is never finished.
As the guest editor of this special issue I am very grateful to the outgoing editor-in-
chief of History of the Human Sciences, James Good, for generously accepting my pro-
posal for a special issue dedicated to Vygotsky. I am deeply grateful to all the authors for
their contributions to mark Vygotsky’s anniversary with new reflections on his work.
Special thanks are due to Darya Belostotskaya, former assistant to Vladimir Petrovich
Zinchencko. Darya translated the article and provided invaluable assistance with copy-
right matters and copy editing queries. It has been an inspiring and encouraging experi-
ence – beyond all geographical, cultural, linguistic differences. I hope that this has not
just been my own experience. For me, this special issue has also provided an opportunity
to reflect on my own encounters with Vygotsky’s theory which I continue to consider as
the most demanding theory psychology has developed so far. It was also an opportunity
to reflect on the socio-political conditions under which I first learnt of Vygotsky’s theory
as a student of psychology in the 1970s in a socialist Yugoslavia which was open, curious
and, it seems to me, courageous enough to include Vygotsky, Piaget and Freud together
in the psychology curriculum. Serbian translations of Vygotsky’s work started appearing
in the 1970s – first, Psychology of Art in 1975, then two years later Myshlenie i rec, trans-
lated from the Russian original of 1956. In the 1990s a 6-volume Serbian translation of
The Collected Works of Vygotsky appeared in Belgrade.
We live now in a very different world – different from that of Vygotsky’s time, dif-
ferent from the 1970s when his international reception started, and very different from
Vygotsky’s ideas of a future psychology and a future society. Nevertheless, I fervently
believe, as did Vygotsky in his time, that we urgently need to build a new psychology
and new society and it is my hope that Vygotsky can still be an inspiring companion
to our thoughts about such a reconstructed psychology and society.