Tuesday, June 20th at 9am Pacific Daylight Savings Time
Guest Speaker: Artin Göncü Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois Chicago
The 10th Session in the Seminar on Imagination & Creativity in Vygotsky’s Work. Contact Francine Smolucha at lsmolucha@hotmail.com for the ZOOM link.
A discussion of the importance of pretend play in adulthood, as well as, the functioning of imagination and creativity throughout the adult years. Vygotsky claimed imagination continues to develop as a Higher Psychological Function, perhaps better described as a psychological system of a higher order. What research evidence is needed to support this hypothesis? And what are the implications for education and the functioning of creative imagination? What would be the implications if pretend play and imagination always remain Lower Psychological Functions that be used along with higher psychological functions?
READINGS:
Artin Göncü and Anthony Perone (2005). “Pretend Play as a Life-span Activity.” Topoi 24, 137-147.
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This is a test.
Hi there Henry
This is a test. I’m posting this and hitting subscribe. (Or do I need to both post and subscribe?)–Ageliki
Dear Agnes, I hope you can read this response.
This is a test. I am posting a comment, then hitting subscribe, as Andre said to do.
I’m currently reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. I’ll begin with a brief quote that I found quite striking:
“When my sister came to visit, her kids, raised in the dry California hills, were smitten with water. They waded after frogs and splashed with abandon while I worked at the algae. My brother-in-law called out from the shade, ‘Hey, who is the biggest kid here?’ I can’t deny it—I’ve never outgrown my desire to play in the mud. But isn’t play the way we get limbered up for the work of the world? My sister defended my pond-raking with the reminder that it was sacred play.”
She’s talking about her effort to clear algae out of a pond so her kids could swim and play in the water. She’s a Potawatomi (indigenous tribe) biologist who seeks to find a synthesis between Western science and Indigenous wisdom.
I find her perspective interesting on many levels. In this brief quote, she makes points that are both consistent with Vygotsky’s views on play, and add an element that I think is missing.
First, in her own career she is seeking a dialectical synthesis between two very different traditions and worldviews: conventional Western science and animistic, relationship-driven Indigenous values. The unity of opposites.
Second, she echoes Vygotsky’s point that play is preparation for labor. Games and other forms of play anticipate the sort of work that people will undertake later.
The final element is the notion of sacred play. They’re not just playing. They are engaged with the natural world in a transcendent way. Taking the Indigenous perspective that plants, animals, and rocks have souls, she makes the case that referring to them as “it” denies their spirituality, and in turn helps people degrade the natural environment through disrespect and abuse. Abandoning this convention, she believes, would alter how people view and engage with the natural world, and leave the planet healthier and more habitable.
I think play can only have this sacred dimension when it is ethical and is undertaken with a feeling of connection with the natural world and the cosmos. It requires a commitment to others that I question is typically available in play and games. I didn’t grow up with this ethos, and only began to learn about it when I lived in Oklahoma from 1990-8, a state with a high Native American population.
I’m a devoted gardener with an environmental emphasis, so this idea is appealing to me. I’ve often described my yard as my science, my religion, my art, my exercise gym, and more. I can’t take a fully native worldview, and grew up surrounded by the belief that indigenous people are less civilized than industrial-technological society members (also true of the Stalinist industrial regime surrounding Vygotsky). But reading books like this makes me think it’s worth trying.
In regard to an earlier posting about the game of creepy crawlie, forty years ago creepy crawly referred to a game with an infant that a care giver initiated by moving their hand and fingers as if it were a bug (spider) crawling up the infant’s chest (as early as three months of age). When I do an internet search for creepy crawly now it has become an alternative name for Itsy Bitsy Spider (poem and finger play). The importance of the
original creepy crawlie game is that care givers can begin pretend play with an object substitution (hand as spider) with infants as young as three months of age. Infant initiated
pretend play such as pretending to drink out of an empty cup or using a bowl as a hat begins about a year later. The point being that caregivers can engage infants in pretend play routines as early as three months of age. [I grew up referring to the hand as spider game calling the spider Bobalezha, until as an adult play researcher I asked my mother if it was the Polish word for spider but she said “no it is the word for it’s crawling”. But I don’t find it in Google translate maybe the Polish phrase “to pełza” for “it is creeping”.]
Dear Francine,
Very interesting! We (in the Balkans) also have this game, and it’s played with little babies and toddlers.
Bobalezha (probably in Polish) is “Buba lazi,” pronounced “Boobah Lahzie.” It is a two-word expression meaning “A bug (Buba) is crawling (lazi).”
You can make the crawling movements on the baby’s chest and later on with kids up the inside of an arm – to see how long they can stand it. It tickles!
Another pretend game often played is “Peekaboo,” which can be played at a very early age too. Babies and toddlers love to be surprised by a supposed “hiding” of either themselves or their partner player (an adult or an older child). Bruner has a whole article on Peekaboo. — Bruner, J. S. and Sherwood (1976). Peekaboo and the Learning of Rule Structures. Play – Its Role in Development and Evolution. J. S. Bruner, A. Jolly, and K. Sylva. New York, Penguin Books, Ltd.
Ana
Thank you Ana,
It might seem that I am preoccupied with a trivial interaction from my childhood,
but consider how as an Eastern European ethnic form of infant play
it was been passed down in my family (with some mystery surrounding it).
How did I come to think “Buba lazi” was Bobalezha the spider. It just occurred to me (this late in the game) that I probably started to play this game with my baby brother who is a year younger than me. So the renaming of the hand and its being used as an object substitution was a pivotal moment for me – and thirty years later my doctoral dissertation was on the social origins of object substitutions in pretend play with toddlers aged 14 to 28 months.
It is also interesting that the spider plays such an important role in Eastern European “Buba lazi”, the Anglo “Itsy Bitsy Spider” pretend play activity,and as “Anansi” in West African culture. In contemporary literature, we have Shelob the giant spider featured in
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings based on his traumatic experience as an infant in Southern Africa when a giant spider climbed in his crib.
This is an interface between nature, folk lore, and mythology that deserves further thought. Peter Smagorinsky’s recent comment about how native American Indian culture is seeking a dialectical synthesis of Western science and a traditional animistic relationship with nature, probably applies to every culture. It is just that in some cases this cultural struggle began centuries earlier. For European people the fairy tales told by the nanny who came from a rural community became the vestige of this old animistic magical way of thinking.
Vygotsky has an essay in his book Educational Psychology about fairy tales and he is very critical of the way nannies’ used fairy tales to torment children. Said simply, the boogeyman will come to get you if you don’t go to sleep. That Blue Beard is a Russian fairy tale is another good example. And to think that Frazier Thomas included Blue Beard among the Russian fairy tale cartoon series on the Garfield Goose children’s show – that was a cornerstone for children growing up in Chicago in the 1950’s and 1960’s [this included haunting serialized cartoons of The Firebeard and The Snow Queen]. For a child of the Polish diaspora of the early 20th century, there were always these residuals from another culture that were hidden beneath the scientific Western culture we found ourselves in. How did that dialectic work out in the case of Copernicus and Marie Curie, who were both Poles who came to exemplify that Western scientific mind? Just wondering, did they lose the old traditions or was it relegated to a special place in family life – playing and telling stories to children? Like Carnevale (in the essay on Bakhtin) it became in a way – a resistance movement.
Yes, Francine. Very interesting!
As I said, Bruner is very. Important here.
And what’s better, the book with the article I cited earlier is available for free on Research Gate. (But not to make the same mistake, please contact me if you are interested in it.)
Ana
Hi everyone,
This is a test of the current posting,
And also, I wonder if there was a notification regarding this posting I made a day ago (I am replying to it.
Ana
Thanks for explaining the difference, Francine. There are some good Trevarthan videos that I have not looked at in a long time that focus on early early.. in case the discussion veers in that direction.
Mike,
As per your request in an email you sent to me less than an hour ago, I am sending you this post. Please let me know ASAP if you get this.
Henry
Here is a link to a PDF that looks like a must read to me.
[Just in time for the beginning of the 2024 election cycle.]
https://files.eric.ed.gov › fulltext › EJ985587.pdf
Bakhtin’s Carnival and Pretend Role Play !#OMPARISONOF3OCIAL#ONTEXTS – edBakhtin’s Carnival and Pretend Role Play ! #OMPARISON OF 3OCIAL #ONTEXTS s Lynn E. Cohen Twentieth-century Russian literary critic and semiotician Mikhail Bakhtin devel-oped an epistemology that linked carnival, authority, and laughter
Dear Francine,
Thanks a lot!
It is a great article that brings up other aspects of play that Vygotsky and his followers often overlook.
Carnevlization is not pure mimesis or pure improvisation. It is a commentary on society, culture, and specific individuals.
It is about perspective and personal opinion that reveal how the players relate to the social, cultural, and personal characteristics of the world they encounter.
It makes pretend play into a personally meaningful, unique statement rather than neutral (value-free) learning of culturally and socially existing ways of being, norms, and values.
What do you think?
Ana
This looks great and its a lifespan perspective
I like this work. It is valuable in showing that there are significant similarities in the performance of childhood and adulthood pretend play in addition to similarities in motivation. In this context, Laurence Goldman’s work is also relevant.
Mike,
This is a test of the CP platform for discussions of presentations on the Coffee Hour and the sessions of the Seminar on Imagination and Creativity in Vygotsky.
I am responding to your comment on xlc-c redux regarding the suggestions from Artin on lines of research on play. You listed five. I’ll just pick out #3, where you write, “Play is an intersubjective activity, always shared either implicitly through language or intentionally through dialogue”.
This would be discourse analysis, a methodology that I think could apply to all of the other focuses of research.
Henry
Let’s consider “pretend play as a form of discourse”.
Vygotsky would probably agree and certainly Bahktin, maybe even Ilyenkov.
Ana Marjianovic-Shane has volunteered to give a ZOOM presentation on this very topic –
introducing us to Bahktin’s writings.
It will be my honor.
Francine is posting Mike’s reply to Henry:
Henry et al.
The text I posted was a summary, written by Artin, just to be clear.
Henry – So its best to think of play as a form of discourse?
mike
Aha! This seems to be working. But yes, Mike, play could be framed as a form of discourse, subject to the kind of fine-grained micro-analysis of the methodology.
Francine is posting Henry Shonerd’s comment:
Hi Mike,
I’ll just pick out #3, where you write, “Play is an intersubjective activity, always shared either implicitly through language or intentionally through dialogue”.
This would be discourse analysis, a methodology that I think could apply to all of the other focuses of research.
Henry
I did not click on subscribe for my previous note in reply to Artin. I did subscribe here.
OK., this is my trial now.. I hope it works. First, responding to Mike, my 5 points are the following. 1) Play should be seen as a cultural activity and cultural interpretation. This enables us to understand what kind of opportunities are afforded for play as well as how the experiences are represented in play and what they mean. This also allows us to see how theories constructed in certain cultural contexts focus on certain aspects of play and overlook others. 2) Play is a life-span activity. It never comes to a halt. 3) Play is an interubjective activity, always shared either implicitly through language or intentionally through dialogue. 4) Childhood play leads to adulthood play as well as giving rise to creativity in other adulthood activities like architecture, science, music, etc. 5) Play as a leading activity supports other activities such as story telling as it also leads to developments in self-awareness, problem-solving, empathy, and tool use (e.g., literacy, numeracy) all of which need research support requiring the choice of appropriate methodologies, not used in mainstream developmental psychology.
Then, in response to Francine, from what I remember Trevarthen himself did not talk about intersubjectivity in imagintive play. I used some of his ideas in addressing constructing intersubjectivity in social imaginative play.
I am not certain what you mean by a cultural interpretation, Artin.
I am keeping this short to see if I get a notice
By cultural interpretation, what I mean is two fold: For one thing, the specific ways in which children represent their experiences in pretend play are extensions of cultural forms that exist in the adult world. For example, in cultures where teasing is a common play form in adult life, it is also incorporated into children’s play. This is a prime example of saying the same message when used in play does not denote what it would have denoted in a non-play context. Examples of this exist in my data on the play of village children in Turkey, and also in the play low-income African-American children. Peggy Miller also observed the same thing in the low-income European-American community she studied. For another, the play themes and topics are all extensions of children’s daily experiences and exposures all of which are influenced if not determined by their cultural context. So, I am saying that both what children represent and how they represent it in pretend play are their attempts to make sense of their lives, their cultural lives.
That makes perfect sense, Artin. thanks for the clafification
Sorry for my typos – to my surprise this message went through.
Is Trevarthan talking about pretend play beginning without imagination?
When a caregiver pretends that there hand is a spider crawling up the infant’s chest,
the infant is drawn into creepy crawly play but might not be imagining the hand is aspider,
it just tickles. Later the object substitution comes to be understaood; and later all thia can
be described in words that evoke an imagined scenario.
This seems plausible to me, Francine. Didn’t Trevarthan start with very young infants, long before the creepy spider goes up the spout.
I agree that during the stage of primary intersubjectivity play does not involve imagination on infant’s part. Secondary intersubjectivity requires language, and the first pretend gestures by the infant appears to coincide with this. Greta Fein called this “decontextualization of familiar acts as in pretending to drink from an empty bottle.)
If you receive this message, please write to me so that we know who is receiving notice of posted messages and who is having difficulty still.
Artin’s talk is wonderful and definitely worth watching over again. I wonder, Artin, if you might make a list of your 5 points. I counted four, but I also had 3 subparts for #1 and 2 subparts for #2 and for # 4 (Play always collaborative). I hope we can spend some time soon, if not next week, discussing the implications of your view. For example, some claim that imagination begins with the semiotic function, but if play is there at the beginnng, a la Trevarthan, then is there play without imagination? Hopefully we can communicate here on CP now.
and this is a reply
Artin’s talk is wonderful and definitely worth watching over again. I wonder, Artin, if you might make a list of your 5 points. I counted four, but I also had 3 subparts for #1 and 2 subparts for #2 and for # 4 (Play always collaborative). I hope we can spend some time soon, if not next week, discussing the implications of your view. For example, some claim that imagination begins with the semiotic function, but if play is there at the beginnng, a la Trevarthan, then is there play without imagination? Hopefully we can communicate here on CP now.