(Reading Roundup)

Originally posted: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 22:24:28

I've been buried with work, but I'm also busy reading several texts.

Currently I'm making my way through E.V. Ilyenkov's 1977 book Dialectical Logic: Essays on its History and Theory, an overview of dialectic as it developed from Spinoza to Lenin. Yrjo Engestrom has been citing Ilyenkov quite a bit in relation to how activity theory understands contradictions and the object of activity. I should be done with that soon and will probably post a review by the end of the week.

Next up is Ilyenkov's Dialectics of the Abstract and Concrete in Marx's Capital and, of course, Capital itself. I haven't read Capital yet, but I've started it and will pick it up again once I've finished with Ilyenkov.

Engestrom once said that you can't truly understand activity theory until you've read Marx. And now Ilyenkov tells me I can't really understand dialectic until I've read Hegel. See how the game is played?

Somewhere in here I will also read Stuart Selber's

Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, which I've agreed to review for a journal.

Finally, I'll need to wedge in Holtzblatt et al.s' Rapid Contextual Design: A How-to Guide to Key Techniques for User-Centered Design. I don't plan to use that book in my contextual design class this fall, but it should help me as I put together assignments and readings. >

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