From Vico to the sociocultural imagination

Self Cite

Book after book, Ivana Markova´has pursued a rigorous exploration of the dialogical nature of human experience and society, from Paradigms, though and language (1982), where she showed the social nature of language, to the well-known Dialogicality and social representations (2003) exploring the dialogical nature of social representations, and with it, the deep articulation of inner and outer dialogues in society, and finally in her remarkable The Dialogical mind: Common sense and ethics (Markova´, 2016) where the enquiry is pushed both to the very foundation of dialogical thinking and to their empirical and practical implications in common sense and everyday life. The thread linking these three books is, according to the author, ''a continuous struggle to understand the interdependence between Self and Others in thought, language in their historical and cultural perspective'' (Markova´, 2016, p. x). In parallel to this theoretical route, Markova´here draws on her recent work on trust (Markova´& Gillespie, 2008, 2011) and her reflection on post-totalitarian societies (among others Markova, 2004; Markova´& Plichtova´, 2007). ''Dialogical'' is here understood in a strong sense: ''the dialogical perspective presented in this book presupposes that the nature of the Self-Other interdependence is ethical and that ethics is embedded in common sense thinking and socially shared knowledge'' (Markova´, 2016, p. 4). This ethical presupposition is also the core message of the book, and it is progressively and systematically demonstrated. In order to do so, Markova´proceeds in two main movements. The first is critical and deconstructive. Entitled '''superior' and 'inferior' modes of thinking and knowing,'' the first section of the book traces back the historical division between rational and irrational thought, or logos and mythos. It then progressively establishes, through a careful reading of the work of Giambattisto Vico, the possibility of a dialogical form of knowledge, or common sense, beyond these divisions. The second movement is a systematic theoretical construction. Under the title ''Dialogicality as epistemology of daily life and of professional practices,'' the second section proposes a series of theoretical, ethical and epistemological axioms, on the basis of which theory is developed, concepts deduced, and implication for methodology and practice examined. This construction is anchored, on the one side, in Markova´'s deep and careful analysis of philosophies of intersubjectivity and dialogue, and on the other, in a wide variety of empirical examples. In the next sections, I retrace these two movements, before highlighting some of the books' contributions to cultural psychology and the social sciences. From higher/inferior to common sense as cultural mode of knowing Markova´starts by reminding us how the division between ''logos'' and ''mythos'' is taken-for-granted since the Antiquity, and that our history of knowledge has almost systematically preferred the first one, living with the illusion that science and po...

Section: Lessons Learned and Implications For Cultural Psychology Fosupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Theoretical Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The dialogical mind: Common sense and ethics Ivana Marková

Zittoun¹

2017

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“…Then I have asked selected scholars who identify themselves as cultural psychologists to reflect upon these fresh hints and suggestions (Brinkmann, 2015;Shotter, 2015;Zittoun, 2015). We cannot expect to grasp the wholeness of the experience by segmenting it into basic unit of analysis and then recombine them into abstract categories, for doing so, we fall into the problem of naturalizing those categories and using them back to explain experience.…”

Section: Imagination: the Neglected Facultymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For this purpose, I invited three original researcher from philosophy (Granatella, 2015), semiology (Pern, 2015), and semiotic anthropology (Rojas, 2015) to dwell for a bit the intellectual house or palace—that Vico built, and confront with the idea of imagination. Then I have asked selected scholars who identify themselves as cultural psychologists to reflect upon these fresh hints and suggestions (Brinkmann, 2015; Shotter, 2015; Zittoun, 2015). We cannot expect to grasp the wholeness of the experience by segmenting it into basic unit of analysis and then recombine them into abstract categories, for doing so, we fall into the problem of naturalizing those categories and using them back to explain experience.…”

Section: Imagination: the Neglected Facultymentioning

confidence: 99%

Giambattista Vico and the psychological imagination

Tateo

2015

This special issue originates from an international workshop on ''Vico and imagination,'' that took place at Aalborg University in 2014, within a research project on Giambattista Vico and the epistemology of psychology. Imagination has inexplicably been relegated to the background in contemporary psychology, despite the fact that imaginative processes are involved in even the most mundane activities. In this editorial, I first present the rationale and the content of the articles and commentaries. Then I outline a brief history of the concept of imagination before Vico, drawing some consequences for contemporary psychology. Finally, I provide the proposal for a new research program on imagination as a higher psychological function that enables us to manipulate complex meanings of both linguistic and iconic forms in the process of experiencing.

“…It led to a multitude of uses of the distancing notion (elaborated in Glick, 2013, p. 447). Our contemporary focus on imagination (Tateo, 2015, 2016; Zittoun, 2015) and creativity (Glaveanu, 2010, 2017; Glaveanu, Gillespie, & Valsiner, 2015; Tanggaard, 2012) are non-direct extensions of the basic ideas of the differentiation theory of Werner.…”

Section: Publication Success That Hides a Failure: Why Do Theories Nomentioning

confidence: 99%

Culture & Psychology: 25 Constructive years

Valsiner¹

2019

In this article, I review main directions in innovative ideas that have been presented on the pages of Culture & Psychology over its 25 year history. The field of cultural psychology has become established and gains increasing prominence over the years covered—yet its future depends on careful development of the specific theoretical ideas catalyzed by the use of the hyper-term culture in the different arenas of concrete human psychology. Potential future ideas for cultural psychology include a move from acculturation to proculturation, modulation of psychological distance by signs, building models of dialogical relationships in socially asymmetric role relations, and of the affective textures of everyday living. These are all processes of higher-order complexity that require new ways of conceptualizing methodology in psychology—one that prioritizes theoretically based methods construction over those of consensually established “tool boxes.” Cultural psychology has the advantage over other areas of psychology to consider both the real and not (yet) real human conditions within the same scheme, thus allowing for conceptualization of highest forms of human creativity in ordinary human lives.