Articulations and implications of the notion of perspective in the semiotic cultural psychology to the comprehension of I other relationships: possible dialogues with Amerindian perspectivism

Author(s)

Danilo Silva Guimarães

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Psicologia (IP/SBD)
• Defense date: 2010-04-08

Examining board members

Livia Mathias Simao; Marta Rosa Amoroso; Vera Silvia Raad Bussab; Nelson Ernesto Coelho Junior; Jaan Valsiner

• Advisor: Livia Mathias Simao

Abstract

Departing from the understanding that human beings are born and develop themselves in their cultural fabric, passing through singular processes of subjectivation, as well as allowing structured fields of action, our first aim in this work was to systematize some propositions generated in the bulk of semiotic-cultural research in Psychology concerning I other relationships. Second, taking into account those propositions, we have tried to articulate them around the notion of perspective. The notion of perspective here in focus concerns with persons positioning from her lived experience, allowing some views about other and things in the world, while preventing other alternative views. Framed by the theoretical-methodological dialogism in Psychology, we then tried to promote a confronting dialogue between the semiotic cultural constructivism in Psychology and the Amerindian perspectivism in Anthropology respecting their respective notions of perspective. In the semiotic cultural constructivism, the notion of perspective touches issues like the multiple personal positioning facing cultural objects (Marková, 2003/2006); the alterity of the other, who has his singular life trajectory, internalizing meaningful references in his process of meaning construction (Lévinas, 1964/1991); the crossing of the selfs and the others sights from and towards their corporeality; Boeschs (1991) notion of symbolic action; the articulations between intersubjective and intrasubjective levels of human experience. In the framework of Amerindian perspectivism, by its side, the issue of body manufacturing in the core of communitarian conviviality is central for understanding the process of construction of identities and alterities. As a result of the confronting dialogue installed by this research, we found out some divergences between the two notions of perspective here put in focus, especially concerning the issue of the multiplicity of personal understandings of an object present in the psychological approach and the issue of the statute of reality (instead of understanding of reality), that plays an important role in the anthropological approach. Aiming to continue the research in the interface of these two areas, where the present research can be considered a starting enterprise, we will try to explore more deeply some conceptual distinctions in both frames of knowledge. This more accurate exploration should include a sharply conceptual distinction concerning the notions of subject, person and individual in both fields of knowledge here confronted. Nevertheless, already made in the present research, a first tentative in this direction, discussing Limas (1996) paper under the notion of bounded indeterminacy (Valsiner, 1998). The result of this tentative was an instrumental model of dialogical multiplication, referred to the objects of a social representation field. Keeping the aim of exploring the potential of our present results for further research, we try to discuss a clinical case - reported and analyzed by Boesch (1991) - according our instrumental model. We consider that our results point to the relevance of continuing our investigations in the directions we here begun especially for the understanding differences inside and amongst persons and societies respect their semiotic cultural universes. We also expect that this kind of research can generate theoretical epistemological systematization useful for professionals and researchers in their reflections and decisions facing psychosocial phenomena (AU)