Coffee Hour with Mike Cole

Vygotsky’s Writings about Imagination and Creativity

Following an earlier discussion on XMCA initiated by Francine Smolucha, David Kellogg and Bernard Schneuwly, they have taken up my suggestion to gather for a coffee hour on Zoom. 

We are scheduling the discussion for Tuesday March 29, at 9am Pacific Daylight time. It is my practice in conducting such discussions to ask those participating to read a single, generative, text. The goal is to provide an anchor, a point of common reference, as participants explore the consequences of differing interpretations from highly qualified scholars. Identifying points of agreement, identifying key disagreements, and venturing proposals for achieving greater understanding is the name of the game. The March 29th date allows time between this invitation and the coffee hour for you to do some reading.

Our guests have put together just such a generative text: “Imagination and creativity in childhood and adolescence,” Chapter Four, from Vygotsky’s Imagination and Creativity in the Age of Childhood.” We propose to use this text to anchor the discussion. It is in Russian, French, and English (just scroll through the document to find the language of your choosing). Even if you do not plan to speak, even to ask a question, I strongly recommend reading the original essay as a warmup for the discussion to come.

Some questions we hope to discuss with you include:

·       Is “imagination and creativity” only one topic, or two?

·       Does creativity presuppose imagination, or is it something independent and less voluntary?

·       How does the problem of mistranslation influence national variations in the interpretation of such texts?

·       Are there any principled differences between early and late Vygotsky with respect to his ideas about imagination and creativity?

In addition, I hope you will have your own questions and interpretations to add to the discussion. In order to get a rough idea of how many of you will be present, and to plan the discussion time appropriately, I am asking those interested in attending to send an email to bjones@ucsd.edu by Friday, March 25^th, so we have time to collate the visitor list and send out the zoom invite.

Find Vygotsky’s essay linked above.  See you on the 29^th!

Mike Cole