The Art of Learning – second half
The first half of the module concentrated on metaphor
itself, and your own construction of contemporary
metaphors. The additional hand-outs that you were
given provide more information about how metaphor
might feature directly within schooling, but our concern
now is to continue linking figuration with a broad
conception of education and its ideologies.
Alongside the preparation for the first assignment, I
tried to keep alive the idea – developed in the
Figurative/Symbolic PowerPoint – that the figures of
contemporary life could be likened to ‘symptoms’ of
society’s wishes, fantasies, and desires. Freud also
adopted this perspective, as is clear from his extended
essay, Civilisation and its Discontents; but rather than
using Freud as our guide to the figurations of education,
we will use Lacan.
To recap - the
first Lacan
PowerPoint
introduced
these ideas:-
Needs became
demands within the
‘register’ of
language. The
child needs water
and ends by
demanding ‘water’.
Ultimately, all
demands amount to
an endless demand
for love – for
recognition of the
self.
Desires, unlike
wishes, are ‘barred’
to consciousness.
Perhaps a study of
figuration is no more
than a search for
‘mirrors’ which
reflect what we
normally cannot see –
and it is only through
their very artificiality
that we can begin to
guess at what it is we
desire.
Desire introduces
an absolute
condition, and it
has as its object
‘nothing’, i.e., a
lack.
Because of its
unconscious
nature, desire
reveals itself
‘metonymically’,
through small
details located at
the margins of
perception.
Fantasy ‘realises’ desire, constructing a set of
co-ordinates within which the subject may find
their location.
The second
PowerPoint
notes on
Lacan
featured
Slavov Zizek’s
book, The
Plague of
Fantasies.
The following
ideas were
introduced:-
Zizek’s opening generalisation is that fantasy
creates in disguised form what it attempts to
conceal. This is a common feature of each of
the ‘seven veils’.
First Veil – Zizek
likens this to Kant’s
‘transcendental
schematism’.
Fantasy mediates
between the
symbolic register and
the pre-symbolic
(the ‘impossible’)
real, enabling us to
‘live’ our desire.
Second Veil – intersubjectivity.
Zizek sums this up as the
question – what do
others want from me?
Over time, Lacan’s
authorship emphasised
three aspects of this:
inter-subjectivity itself,
the subject’s entry into
the symbolic register,
and the agalma – that
which gives value to me.
Third Veil –
narrative’s occlusion
of contradiction.
Antagonistic aspects
of the present are
separated by the
temporal structure of
narrative. This
picture avoids that
strategy by staging
contradiction ‘safely’
– they are only
children, after all!
Fourth Veil – after
the fall.
Fantasy re-enacts
the installation of
the Law, locating
the subject within
it, rather than
leaving it ‘outside’,
i.e., not ordered,
not able to play a
recognised role,
and liable to
punishment or
correction.
Fifth Veil – the
impossible gaze.
Fantasy reconfigures
the symbolic register,
instantaneously
relocating the subject –
forming new coordinations with the
social fabric. But once
‘narrativised’ a
moment of ‘birth’ is
generated to account
for this change - one
the subject ‘sees’.
the start of the affair – new forms
of significance constructed out of
the normal flow of past events.
Sixth Veil – the inherent transgression.
Here ‘art’ reveals the censorship concealing the
fantasmatic underpinnings of the symbolic order.
Seventh Veil – the empty gesture.
The interaction of the symbolic register and its
fantasmatic underpinnings result in the existence
of ‘unwritten’ rules which must be obeyed.
There is, of course, more to Lacan and
fantasy than Zizek’s ‘seven veils’ – his
entire book is intended as an introduction
to this aspect of lacanian psychoanalysis.
However, for our purposes we have more
than enough to be getting on with.
The next PowerPoint continues with the
theme of fantasy offering insight into
figuration, but it does so by featuring
selected mythological figures that have
relevance to the analysis of the ideologies
employed within education.
D.M.B. 2011.