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Page numbers from pdf
http://loisholzman.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/activating-postmodernism.pdf
p.2 The perspective of this article is that both the exposing [JLJ - of philosophical biases underlying many of psychology's core conceptions] and the engaging [JLJ - of ordinary people in new ways of relating to themselves and others] need to occur simultaneously if psychology is to become useful in empowering people to contemplate and effect creative approaches to social change.
p.3 In his early writings (for example, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and The German Ideology) Marx put forth a radically social humanism: human beings are first and foremost social beings. He posited that both human activity and human mind are social, not just in their origins but in their content.
p.4 Vygotsky brought Marx's sociological insights to bear on the practical question of how human beings learn and develop. He departed from traditional psychology’s understanding of development as an individual accomplishment and instead viewed development as a socio-cultural activity. His writings on cognitive development in early childhood (e.g., Vygotsky, 1987) have turned out to have increasing relevance to cognitive, social and emotional development at all ages and in numerous settings. Vygotsky can be seen as a forerunner to a new psychology of becoming, in which people experience the social nature of their existence and the power of collective creative activity in the process of making new tools for growth.
p.6 Activity and mind are social in their content as well as in their origin; they are social activity and social mind. (Marx, 1967, p. 129)
p.7 Vygotsky recognized that a new ontological unit - activity - necessitated a new conception of method: "The search for method becomes one of the most important problems of the entire enterprise of understanding the uniquely human forms of psychological activity. In this case, the method is simultaneously prerequisite and product, the tool and the result of the study" (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 65).
p.9 Learning, then, is both the source and the product of development, just as development is both the source and the product of learning.
p.12-13 Vygotsky's language completing thought ("thought completed in the word") presents an alternative to the dominant Western philosophical-linguistic-psychological paradigm which rests on the assumption that language expresses thought. Vygotsky is not reversing the order of their relationship; he is rejecting the bifurcated interactionist view of language and thought and, thereby, doing away with the necessity of "reconnecting" them, that is, he rejects the overdetermined and overdetermining conception that language denotes, names, represents and expresses. Language completing thought identifies language as socio-cultural relational activity.
p.18 From a social therapeutic perspective, the human capacity to perform, that is, to be both "who we are" and "who we are becoming/who we are not" at the very same time, is the source of qualitative change. Performance is the activity by which human beings transform and continuously reshape the unity that is us-and-our environment.
p.19 social therapy - as activity-theoretic - goes beyond positing subjectivist accountings of truth (many truths, all with a small “t”) to reject truth (in both its upper and lower case forms) in favor of activity. The ontological shift to activity transforms discourse (in particular, therapeutic discourse) from an epistemological appeal to either an objective, outer Truth/Reality or subjective, inner truths and realities - to an activisitic, self-reflexive engagement of the creating of the discourse itself (what is/is becoming). The shift involves relating to therapeutic discourse as performance, and to clients as an ensemble of performers who are, with the therapists’ help, staging a new therapeutic conversation (a therapy play) each session. Performing therapy exposes the fictional nature of "the truth" of our everyday language
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