The Affective Power of the Imagination: Vygotsky With Spinoza / El poder afectivo en la imaginación: Vygotski con Spinoza

Vygotsky, basing himself on Spinoza, identifies the driver of the differentiation of psychic functions as the development of the affects themselves. This transformation of affectivity is played out through the ludic imagination of the child. Since, according to Spinoza’s Ethics , one affect may only be overcome by a stronger affect, the child can free herself or himself from the temptations of reality and from his or her own affective tendencies only by opposing them with a stronger affectivity, born of the imaginative pleasures of playing by rules—born, therefore, from the transformation of a concept into an affect. It is this concept becoming an affect that brings the child to a zone of proximal development—to “a notch above himself/herself.” We examine, through this use of Spinozism by Vygotsky, in what sense the ludic imagination of the child, but also the esthetic imagination of the poet, is a true work of de-realization—what Vygotsky also called, from Shklovsky, “enstranging” [making strange]—such that the experienced emotions become intelligent ones.