Smart Matter and the Thinking Body: Activity Theory and the Turn to Matter in Contemporary Philosophy
Keywords:
Activity Theory, material turn, Ilyenkov, posthuman, agency
Abstract
This article seeks to excavate and mobilize Activity Theory (AT) for a conversation with recent trends in contemporary philosophy that attempt to overcome the relativism of the linguistic turn while accepting the latter’s core critique of Enlightenment conceptions of the human and nonhuman. Specifically, it focuses on Ilyenkov’s concept of the thinking body as a useful contrast to the ascription of agency to matter, and instead helps to illuminate the social practices that animate the material world.
References
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Engeström, Yrjö (1999). “Activity Theory and Individual and Social Transformation.” In Perspectives on Activity Theory, eds. Yrjö Engeström and Reijo Miettinen, 19–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Latour, Bruno (1999). Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Law, John (2010). “The Material of STS.” In The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies, eds. Mary Caroline Beaudry and Dan Hicks, 171–86. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leontiev, Aleksey N. (1975). Deyatel’nost, soznanie, lichnost’ [Activity, consciousness,and personality]. Moskva: Politizdat.
Leontiev, Aleksey N. (1978). Activity, Consciousness, and Personality. New York: PrenticeHall.
Levant, Alex (2008). The Soviet Union in Ruins. Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag.
Levant, Alex (2011). “Towards a History of Creative Soviet Theory: From the History of Soviet Philosophy: Lukács–Vygotsky–Ilyenkov by Sergey Mareev.” Historical Materialism 19.3: 176–89.
Levant, Alex (2014). “E.V. Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism: Introduction to Dialectics of the Ideal.” In Dialectics of the Ideal: Evald Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism, eds. Alex Levant and Vesa Oittinen, 3–24. Leiden: Brill.
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Maidansky, Andrey (2005). “Metamorphoses of the Ideal.” Studies in East European Thought 57: 289–304.
Maidansky, Andrey, and Vesa Oittinen, eds. (2016). The Practical Essence of Man: The “Activity Approach” in Late Soviet Philosophy. Leiden: Brill.
Mareev, Sergey (2008). Iz Istorii Sovetskoi Filosofii: Lukach–Vygotskii–Il’enkov [From the history of Soviet philosophy: Lukács–Vygotsky–Ilyenkov]. Moscow: Kul’turnaia revoliutsiia.
Marx, Karl (1859). A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. ..
Marx, Karl (1887). Capital: Critique of Political Economy [1867]..
Marx, Karl (1969). Theses on Feuerbach [1888]. Trans. W. Lough..
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels (1991). The German Ideology [1846]. New York: International Publishers.
Meshcheryakov, Alexander (2009). Awakening to Life: On the Education of Deaf-blind Children in the Soviet Union. Pacifica, CA: Marxists Internet Archive.
Meshcheryakov, Alexander (1974). Slepogluhie deti. Razvitie psihiki v protsesse formirovaniya povedeniya [Deafblind children: The development of the mind in the process of forming behaviour]. Moscow: Pedagogy.
Meshcheryakov, Alexander (2009). “Awakening to Life: On the Education of Deaf-blind Children in the Soviet Union.” Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists. org/archive/meshcheryakov/awakening/index.htm.
Moore, Jason W. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso.
Nissen, Morten, and Katrine Barington (2016). “Numbers: User-Driven Standards and Manageable Nothingness.” In Nothingness: Philosophical Insights into Psychology, eds. Jytte Bang and Ditte Winther-Lindqvist. London: Transaction Publishers.
Oittinen, Vesa (2005). “Evald Il’enkov as interpreter of Spinoza.” Studies in East European Thought 57: 319–38.
Pepperell, Robert (2009). The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness Beyond the Brain. Bristol: Intellect Books.
Rosenberger, Robert, and Peter-Paul Verbeek, eds. (2015). Postphenomenological Investigations: Essays on Human-Technology Relation. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Sawchuk, Peter H. (2007). “Understanding Diverse Outcomes for Working-Class Learning: Conceptualising Class Consciousness as Knowledge Activity.” The Economic and Labour Relations Review 17.2: 199–216.
Sharon, Tamar (2014). Human Nature in an Age of Biotechnology: The Case for Mediated Posthumanism. London: Springer.
Stetsenko, Anna (2005). “Activity as Object-Related: Resolving the Dichotomy of Individual and Collective Planes of Activity.” Mind, Culture, and Activity. 12.1: 70–88.
Stetsenko, Anna (2013). “The Challenge of Individuality in Cultural-Historical Activity Theory: “Collectividual” Dialectics from a Transformative Activist Stance.” Outlines: Critical Practice Studies 14.2: 7–28.
Sugiyama, Satomi, and Jane Vincent eds. (2013). Social Robots and Emotion: Transcending the Boundary Between Humans and ICTs. Intervalla: Platform for Intellectual Exchange, Vol.1. https://www.fus.edu/intervalla/volume-1-social-robots-and- emotiontranscendingtheboundarybetweenhumansandicts.
Verbeek, Peter-Paul (2005). What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Vygotsky, Lev (1978). Mind in Society: The Psychology of Higher Mental Functions. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Bakhurst, David (1991). Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy: From the Bolsheviks to Evald Ilyenkov. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barad, Karen (2003). “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.” Signs 28.3: 801–31.
Barad, Karen (2007). Meeting the Universe Half Way: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Barad, Karen (2012). “Interview with Karen Barad.” In New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies, eds. Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin, 48–71. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press.
Benjamin, Walter (2003). “On the Concept of History.” In Selected Writings, Vol. 4: 1938– 1940 [1940], 389–400. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bøttcher, Louise, and Jesper Dammeyer (2016). Development and Learning of Young Children with Disabilities: A Vygotskian Perspective. London: Springer.
Braidotti, Rosi (2013). The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Chukhrov, Keti (2013). “Epistemological Gaps between the Former Soviet East and the ‘Democratic’ West.” e-flux. 41.1 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/41/60226/episte mologicalgapsbetweentheformersovieteastandthedemocraticwest/
Cole, Michael (1996). Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cole, Michael and Yrjö Engeström (1993). “A Cultural-Historical Approach to Distrib uted Cognition.” In Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Consid- erations, ed. Gavriel Salomon, 1–46. New York: Cambridge University Press.
De Smet, Brecht (2015). Gramsci on Tahrir: Revolution and Counter-revolution in Egypt. London: Pluto Press.
Dolphijn, Rick, and Iris van der Tuin, eds. (2012). New Materialism: Interviews & Cartog- raphies. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press.
Engeström, Yrjö (1987). “Learning by Expanding. An Activity-Theoretical Approach to Developmental Research,” PhD diss. Univeristy of Jyväskylä.
Engeström, Yrjö (1999). “Activity Theory and Individual and Social Transformation.” In Perspectives on Activity Theory, eds. Yrjö Engeström and Reijo Miettinen, 19–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Engeström, Yrjö, and Reijo Miettinen, eds. (1999). Perspectives On Activity Theory. Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Halpern, Daniel, and James Katz (2013). “Close But Not Stuck: Understanding Social Distance in HumanRobot Interaction Through a Computer Mediation Approach.” In Social Robots and Emotion: Transcending the Boundary Between Humans and ICTs, eds. Satomi Sugiyama and Jane Vincent, 17–34. Intervalla: Platform for In tellectual Exchange, Vol.1; https://www.fus.edu/intervalla/volume-1-social-ro botsandemotiontranscendingtheboundarybetweenhumansandicts
Haraway, Donna (1991). “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Rein- vention of Nature, ed. Donna Haraway, 149–81. New York: Routledge.
Haraway, Donna (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Dur ham: Duke University Press.
Hasse, Cathrine (2015). An Anthropology of Learning: On Nested Frictions in Cultural Ecologies. London: Springer.
Hedegaard, Mariane, and Marilyn Fleer (2008). Studying Children: A Cultural-Historical Approach. England: Open University Press.
Ihde, Don (2010). “Interview with Don Ihde.” Figure/Ground. http://figureground.org/interviewwithdonihde/
Ilyenkov, Evald (1974). Dialekticheskaja logika [Dialectical logic]. Moscow: Politizdat.
Ilyenkov, Evald (1977). Dialectical Logic: Essays on Its History and Theory [1974]. Trans. H. Campbell Creighton. Moscow: Progress.
Ilyenkov, Evald (1982). Leninist Dialectics and the Metaphysics of Positivism: Reflections on V.I. Lenin’s Book “Materialism and Empirio-criticism” [1979]. Trans. Frederick Choate. London: New Park Publications.
Ilyenkov, Evald (2008). The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx’s Capital [1960]. Delhi: Aakar Books.
Ilyenkov, Evald (2009). “Dial’ektika ideal’nogo” [Dialectics of the ideal]. Logos. 69.1: 6–62.
Ilyenkov, Evald (2012). “Dialectics of the Ideal” [2009]. Trans. Alex Levant. Historical Materialism 20.2: 149–93.
Kaptelinin, Victor (2005). “The Object of Activity: Making Sense of the Sense-Maker.” Mind, Culture and Activity. 12.1: 4–18.
Kaptelinin, Victor and Bonnie Nardi (2006). Acting With Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Katz, James E. ed. (2003). Machine that Become Us: The Social Context of Personal Communication Technology. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers.
Lalueza, José Luis, Isabel Crespo, and Marc Bria. (2008). “Microcultures, Local Communities, and Virtual Networks.” In Handbook of Research on Digital Information Technologies, 117–30. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
Latour, Bruno (1992). “Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mun dane Artifacts.” In Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, eds. Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, 225–58. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Latour, Bruno (1999). Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Law, John (2010). “The Material of STS.” In The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies, eds. Mary Caroline Beaudry and Dan Hicks, 171–86. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leontiev, Aleksey N. (1975). Deyatel’nost, soznanie, lichnost’ [Activity, consciousness,and personality]. Moskva: Politizdat.
Leontiev, Aleksey N. (1978). Activity, Consciousness, and Personality. New York: PrenticeHall.
Levant, Alex (2008). The Soviet Union in Ruins. Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag.
Levant, Alex (2011). “Towards a History of Creative Soviet Theory: From the History of Soviet Philosophy: Lukács–Vygotsky–Ilyenkov by Sergey Mareev.” Historical Materialism 19.3: 176–89.
Levant, Alex (2014). “E.V. Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism: Introduction to Dialectics of the Ideal.” In Dialectics of the Ideal: Evald Ilyenkov and Creative Soviet Marxism, eds. Alex Levant and Vesa Oittinen, 3–24. Leiden: Brill.
Longo, G. (2003). “Mediating the Human Body: Technology, Communication, and Fashion.” In Body and Technology: Continuity or Discontinuity, eds. Leopoldina Fortunati, James Katz, and Raimonda Riccini, 23–29. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Maidansky, Andrey (2005). “Metamorphoses of the Ideal.” Studies in East European Thought 57: 289–304.
Maidansky, Andrey, and Vesa Oittinen, eds. (2016). The Practical Essence of Man: The “Activity Approach” in Late Soviet Philosophy. Leiden: Brill.
Mareev, Sergey (2008). Iz Istorii Sovetskoi Filosofii: Lukach–Vygotskii–Il’enkov [From the history of Soviet philosophy: Lukács–Vygotsky–Ilyenkov]. Moscow: Kul’turnaia revoliutsiia.
Marx, Karl (1859). A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. .
Marx, Karl (1887). Capital: Critique of Political Economy [1867].
Marx, Karl (1969). Theses on Feuerbach [1888]. Trans. W. Lough.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels (1991). The German Ideology [1846]. New York: International Publishers.
Meshcheryakov, Alexander (2009). Awakening to Life: On the Education of Deaf-blind Children in the Soviet Union. Pacifica, CA: Marxists Internet Archive.
Meshcheryakov, Alexander (1974). Slepogluhie deti. Razvitie psihiki v protsesse formirovaniya povedeniya [Deafblind children: The development of the mind in the process of forming behaviour]. Moscow: Pedagogy.
Meshcheryakov, Alexander (2009). “Awakening to Life: On the Education of Deaf-blind Children in the Soviet Union.” Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists. org/archive/meshcheryakov/awakening/index.htm.
Moore, Jason W. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso.
Nissen, Morten, and Katrine Barington (2016). “Numbers: User-Driven Standards and Manageable Nothingness.” In Nothingness: Philosophical Insights into Psychology, eds. Jytte Bang and Ditte Winther-Lindqvist. London: Transaction Publishers.
Oittinen, Vesa (2005). “Evald Il’enkov as interpreter of Spinoza.” Studies in East European Thought 57: 319–38.
Pepperell, Robert (2009). The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness Beyond the Brain. Bristol: Intellect Books.
Rosenberger, Robert, and Peter-Paul Verbeek, eds. (2015). Postphenomenological Investigations: Essays on Human-Technology Relation. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Sawchuk, Peter H. (2007). “Understanding Diverse Outcomes for Working-Class Learning: Conceptualising Class Consciousness as Knowledge Activity.” The Economic and Labour Relations Review 17.2: 199–216.
Sharon, Tamar (2014). Human Nature in an Age of Biotechnology: The Case for Mediated Posthumanism. London: Springer.
Stetsenko, Anna (2005). “Activity as Object-Related: Resolving the Dichotomy of Individual and Collective Planes of Activity.” Mind, Culture, and Activity. 12.1: 70–88.
Stetsenko, Anna (2013). “The Challenge of Individuality in Cultural-Historical Activity Theory: “Collectividual” Dialectics from a Transformative Activist Stance.” Outlines: Critical Practice Studies 14.2: 7–28.
Sugiyama, Satomi, and Jane Vincent eds. (2013). Social Robots and Emotion: Transcending the Boundary Between Humans and ICTs. Intervalla: Platform for Intellectual Exchange, Vol.1. https://www.fus.edu/intervalla/volume-1-social-robots-and- emotiontranscendingtheboundarybetweenhumansandicts.
Verbeek, Peter-Paul (2005). What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Vygotsky, Lev (1978). Mind in Society: The Psychology of Higher Mental Functions. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Published
2017-12-18
How to Cite
Levant, A. (2017). Smart Matter and the Thinking Body: Activity Theory and the Turn to Matter in Contemporary Philosophy. Stasis, 5(2). https://doi.org/10.33280/2310-3817-2017-5-2-248-264
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Articles
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