Perezhivanie in the Light of the Later Vygotsky’s Spinozist Turn

Perezhivanie is a category that takes on special significance in the light of the Spinozist turn that Vygotsky was beginning to take toward the end of his life, but the development of which was interrupted by his untimely death. In this study, we use several empirical classroom episodes to exhibit how, with perezhivanie, psychological research necessarily moves from an empiricist stage to an inquiry into “peak psychology,” one that is oriented toward the future. We end by suggesting that perezhivanie in the light of the later Vygotsky’s direction requires, as he articulated in his notebooks, rewriting much of the theory he had established before.