Intrasubjectivity | intersubjectivity

pp. 81-100

in: Wolff-Michael Roth, Alfredo Jornet, Understanding educational psychology, Berlin, Springer, 2017

Abstract

One of the big myths about knowing is that it is subjective-private. In constructivist approaches, this myth manifests itself in the idea of individual who continuously need to construct the world in their minds and then test the fit of these constructions. In the social sphere, individual subjectivity is opposed to intersubjectivity, an achievement of negotiation processes. Nothing could be further from Vygotsky's way of thinking about the relation between the individual and the collective, for any higher function is a social relation first. In his approach, therefore, there is nothing within that simultaneously is not also without. There is only a dynamic unity/identity of intersubjectivity and intrasubjectivity. In this chapter we review ways in which subjectivity and intersubjectivity are related in the literature and contrast them with the monist take. Analyzing transactions in second-grade classes on geometry, we show how intrasubjectivity always already is intersubjectivity so that ultimately we can only speak of intra-intersubjectivity. We conclude discussing how the late, Spinozist Vygotsky abandons sign mediation and adopts the idea of an intersubjective speech field. It is here that the individual becomes a member of the human species.