Agenda

Vygotsky's works are now almost a century old, but his ideas do not feel particularly dated. He developed a psychology linked to the philosophy of Spinoza and Husserl, structuring a paradigm that was much more articulated than the physicalist one in vogue during those years, which finds a specific expression in Piaget. Particularly significant is Vygotsky's approach to the languages of art, to the importance of tremor (fremito), estrangement (straniamento), and catharsis, where form "struggles with content and dominates it." This is coupled with the theorization on inner speech. In relation to this last element, Vygotsky's reading of certain passages by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is particularly significant. The examination of the cinematographic aspects of this figure would then be carried out by Eisenstein, who was in dialogue with Vygotsky, but also with Joyce. However, Vygotsky's theory is not limited to art criticism but involves every form of thought, in which he always sees a dialectic between concept and affect, defined as a "living drama." This leads one to reflect on new functions that could be attributed to the media.