HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY: recommendations for a Marxist reading of Vygotsky

Abstract

The article argues against the insertion of Vygotsky’s psychology into the universe of constructivism, reaffirming the importance of reclaiming historical and cultural psychology from the point of view of its Marxist foundations. In this sense, based upon the review of a selected critical literature, it summarizes Vygotsky’s intellectual trajectory, emphasizing his central role in the process of constructing, alongside Luria and Leontiev, a Marxist psychology in the context of Russian’s revolutionary period inaugurated in 1917; it discusses the main difficulties in terms of reconstructing Vygotsky’s work following the Stalinist chaos, as well as those related to the introduction of his thought in the Western world, particularly in the United States and Brazil; and, finally, it establishes the essential mistakes operated by neo-vygotskyanism, for example, pulling the language category away from the Marxist principle of work.