Vygotsky's Last Months: Affect Theory and the Anthropological Turn

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Cultural Historical Activity Theory Research on Partnerships and Collaboration as Culturally and Historically Situated Systems for Professional Learning

Abstract

This paper will relate recent scholarship on the Vygotsky family archive and attempt to paint a picture of Vygotsky’s last project, which involved the reading of Spinoza and theorizing a new description of psychology. The Spinozist concepts of affect and freedom prove central to this understanding. Spinoza’s affect is an intensity which is pre-feeling and, indeed, pre-human. Affect rather moves through the human to increase or decrease an action or passion. Affect traverses both mind and body. What if the goal of education were not to encourage students to regulate their feelings but rather to promote joy? This and other Vygotskian ideas will be taken up in order to articulate late Vygotskian thoughts, ending in a new description of psychology.

Author

• Travis Henry, University of Georgia - Athens