Emotional experience,meaning,and sense production: Interweaving concepts to dialogue with the funds of identity approach

Abstract

This essay comments on the paper by Esteban and Moll (2014), which proposes the concept of funds of identity. The comments reflect the concepts of emotional experience (perezhivanie), semiotic mediation (Vygotsky), and the process of meaning and sense production (Bakhtin), which affirm that human development is rooted in the synthesis of social and personal history. According to this perspective, the individual’s subjectivity is produced by and immersed within the social world, and even when the environmental conditions remain almost the same, the role of the environment changes as the person changes during the process of development, mediated by the meanings and senses produced through the social practices and interactions. Regarding the illustrative examples presented by the authors, it is argued that the students’ funds of identity can be an important resource to teachers, not only as a departing point to the school practices but also as material for the school to accomplish its historical role of collectively constructing and sharing social knowledge and cultural experience. The concept of funds of identity can be viewed as a very provocative way to analyze how sociocultural experiences produce subjectivity. Future studies can further the theoretical discussion, deepening on the possibilities, implications, and limits of the concept.