Slavoj Zizek’s dialectics of ideology and the discourses of Irish education
Keywords: Zizek, languages of education, ideology
Subject classification: Philosophy of Education
A number of different discourses are evident in contemporary Irish educational policy, debate and theory: the
grammar of marketisation, the poetry of Bildung and culture, the prose of Christian formation together with
the ubiquitous rhetoric of personal developmental psychology. These are among the languages vying for
descriptive, and more significantly, normative dominance. All claim both to describe and legitimise the reality
of education and tensions and antagonism between these understandings divides the educational community,
politicians and social commentators. They also function as “formative discourses” shaping the way in which
we view and imagine the subjectivity of learners. Reading these languages as examples of dialectical ideology
types as proposed by Slavoj Zizek and applying his critique of ideology suggest a new way of illuminating
these languages of education. The critique also proposes a novel notion of the subjectivity of the learner that
eludes dominance by language and the symbolic order.
How we speak of things in the world, of our inner world as well as the worlds of social and physical reality,
reflects [or perhaps is identical with] how we think about these worlds. Assuming honesty and integrity, how
we think and speak of the world informs, configures and directs how we act Language, life commitments and
material conditions guide political, social and, by extension, educational action as the instruments of
explanation, interpretation, prediction and action. Most importantly perhaps, language is central [some claim
determining] in the mediation and formation of self and others. For these reasons, how we speak and think of
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education exerts constitutive power in domains ranging from policy making to our model of the learner. Our
language of education is neither absolute nor arbitrary, but cultural and historical. There is no single “grand
narrative” of education that secures its essence and guarantees permanence and shared understanding. But
neither is any language of education neutral with respect to metaphysical and conceptual traditions, social and
cultural influences or structures of power, surveillance and control. Particularly these latter influences give
cause for examining carefully and critically how we speak of education, recognising that there is evidence
[outlined below] of different languages colonising educational discourse in different sectors of Irish
education. For this reason what follows sets out to examine some of the languages of education as spoken in
Ireland and introduces Slavoj Zizek’s ethical and psychoanalytical critique of language/ideology as a way of
a) illuminating how these languages shape the way in which we view education and the learner and b)
providing an alternative notion of the learner as subject.
The main languages of Irish education
There are, broadly speaking, three or four main languages or discourses in the field of contemporary
education in Ireland. First, there is the relatively recent language of marketisation and globalisation which
takes its vocabulary, grammar and rhetorical tropes from the world of commerce and economics. This
language is particularly evident in WTO, OECD and EU documents and increasingly visible in DES
statements and publications1 and consequently can be described as a “top-down” discourse. However, it is a
language that is being learned very quickly particularly by media commentators on education and also
increasingly its terms are finding a place in the speech of university heads, researchers, teachers and parents.
To take just one example, the Department of Education and Science Statement of Strategy 2005-2007 speaks of “high standards of
service, greater accountability and quality planning to meet future educational needs” and “delivering quality services that address
the needs of our customers, clients and learners at all levels” [http//www.education.ie/home and follow directions to Reports and
Publications/ General/ Strategy Statement 2005-2007.
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This vocabulary contains terms such as commodity, customers, service-providers, clients, products, priorities,
progress and implementation. At its metaphysical core is a neo-liberal, positivistic view of society that reveals
a strong tendency to reduce society and culture to economy and the constitution of education to a set of
practices aimed at supporting the accumulation of wealth and strategic economic interests2. The human capital
and signalling theories of economics endow education with meaning only as utility. While this language is
most evident in debate on third level education, it is beginning to emerge in first and second level discussion,
perhaps in part through the transfer to their world of work of modes of speaking and thinking of the many
teachers who undertake further learning at third level. A particularly stark example of the use of this language
is provided by the aggressive promotion of the market liberalisation of trade in educational services in
Australia. Here, increasingly, education is referred to as an “industry” and a “sector” in which the main debate
surround quality assurance, consumer protection and the questionable rationale for public subsidies of
education (Ziguras, et al, 2003). Knowledge is no longer a matter of acquiring meaning and understanding,
developing critique, communicative virtues and learning moral action but is a commodity defined by
government by its place in the “knowledge economy”. The Irish debate has not yet embraced this Australian
idiom quite to this extent but it is becoming more evident in public debate. On the other hand, there is a
growing critical reaction to the dangers of what is seen to be a monopolising of educational talk by this
particular language.3
One pertinent reason why this particular language has not colonised debate is the existence of a second
powerful language in Irish education. This is what might be termed the discourse of developmental
psychology, the dominant informing discipline in education of the twentieth century. This language uses the
vocabulary of the psychological and social development of the individual. Its roots lie in work of Piaget,
Ayn Rand put the connection between learning and wealth succinctly as “Wealth is the product of man’s ability to think”.
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Kohlberg, Bruner, Vygotsky and others well know to generations of Irish educators. It is grounded
philosophically in a European, humanistic subject-centred view of reason with its obvious strong emphasis on
individualism. The aims of education are self-realisation, the realisation of potentialities and the moral and
social development of the individual. An outstanding characteristic of this account of education is the attempt
to base education in a naturalistic theory. Using socio-biological metaphors, educators describe their activities
as facilitating or aiding the natural growth and evolution of “seeds” or potentialities and “intelligences” The
strong individual focus of this talk has been possibly one factor in the now widely accepted recognition of
individual difference and needs and particularly of special needs in education. So strong is the dominance of
this language in some parts of society that demands have been made for this approach to be enshrined
legislatively in individual educational rights. More general evidence of the use of this language can be found
in the documents of the NCCA and it is probably reasonable to say that this is the lingua franca of initial
teacher education in Ireland. Critics of this language point to a number of difficulties. For one, this
overemphasis on the individual and catering for individual needs neglects an ancient understanding of the role
of education in the reproduction of traditions, solidarities and identities. For critical pedagogy theorists, on the
other hand, the concerns of an individually based developmental psychology mask the political and
emancipatory potential, even duty, of education.
In addition to these two main languages there are three lesser spoken but important dialects. These are
connected by a partially shared history and certain shared aims. The first is the language of Bildung4 with its
centrality in the formation of self as cultural and historical artefact rather than as an imminent psychological
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In Ireland, see for instance, Limond D. (2007) Education, Neo-Liberalism and Contemporary Ireland, Studies 96 (382) pp. 169178.
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The term Bildung appears in educational writings in Germany in the 1750s. It has been translated variously as “formation”, “
personal, cultural and moral development” and a” process of gradual perfection to an ideal”. It connotes more than knowledge and
psychological development. Because much of its richness of meaning is lost in translation, the term is usually left in the original.
See Nordenbo, 2002.
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and social construct. This traditional language of education is most evident in the educational discourses of
mainland Europe but there are traces of the accent to be found in recent attempts to find a language to act as a
counterbalance to the language of market growth without resorting either to the language of psychology or the
dialect of religious formation so influential in Ireland in the past. Bildung can be understood as the active
assistance in the formation of an individual. It is a key concept of educational thinking that emerges from the
Enlightenment but is held also to be characteristic of the education of Greek culture as Paideia5. As indicated
by its etymological root in the word Bild6, it is a teleological concept connected with an ideal image of a
human being. “According to this, a genuine education is a Bildung that includes a number of subjects,
develops the individual in accordance with his or her own nature, and is also in harmony with the universal
principles of the world and society” (Nordenbo, 2002). Of interest in comparison to the other languages
presented above, Bildung is precisely neither private [in the sense of narcisstic self-realisation] nor is it about
public utility [in the sense of a narrow economic agenda]. It proposes fundamentally an essentialist model of
human beings in which private and public spheres exist in harmony. It is this ideal, teleological thrust and the
demand for the induction of a human learner into particular subjects that prove difficult for many modern
educationalists to accept with the result that this language has fallen into decline. Efforts to revive it focus on
attempts to re-formulate the Bildung idea of the harmony of the individual and the general in terms of the
demand of the sociology of knowledge and critical education to decipher the workings of power behind the
language of the status quo (Biesta, 2002).
Allied with the language of Bildung in as much as they share a common invocation of the Greek educational
idea of paideia, is the language and tradition of Christian educational thought. Though nowadays in Ireland
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The Greek term for education or learning is equivalent to the Latin humanitas and refers to broad education of mind, body and
senses [hence the term encyclopaedia]. It also carries with it connotations of moral, cultural and even theological development
[particularly in Plato’s Republic]. As a classical Greek educational term it also refers, of course, to the initiation of the citizen into
the state and politics.
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less explicitly invoked or used, the language of Christian education has occupied a privileged station in the
past and echoes and reminders of a theological idiom in educational language still persist in Irish education.
Embracing a broadly paidean concept of curriculum and initiation into fixed bodies of knowledge, it adds at
least two further dimension to the purposes of education not present in other languages. First, in the dominant
Thomist tradition, Christian education is directed at full understanding in order to come to an understanding of
God, so its aims go beyond this-worldly ends [either personal, social or economic]. Coupled with this is a
strong sense of the limitations of education in the necessity of the self-revelation of God for full understanding
(McIntyre, 1998). Secondly, the language of Christian education also contains the theological vocabulary of
both personal and social “sin”, terms and educational factors not present in other languages (Kolvenbach,
1989).
Thirdly, there is the idiom of Marxist-humanist critical pedagogy or the “discourse of the left”. It shares its
historical and philosophical roots with the language of Bildung particularly in its Hegelian form. Hegel’s
philosophy and his notion of Bildung highlight the cultural and historical horizon of human subjectivity. Selfconsciousness is an awareness of being-in-history and the goal of education is the practice of freedom in
agency that brings forth truth. In the Marxist-humanist interpretation, the harmonic realisation of Reason in
history is replaced by human agents who actively produce history by living out the inherent, conflictual
“negation” in all things. As Marx famously stated “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in
various ways; the point is to change it” (Marx, 1974, 123). Critical pedagogy, which stands squarely in this
tradition, is viewed as a process of bringing learners to critical consciousness of the struggle to bring forth
truth in revolution by learning to critique authority, the state and the state of affairs that learners find
presented by the world. McLaren, a leading figure in modern critical pedagogy, views critical education as
“the gift of fire” [by a teacher] to students and the shared commitment to critique and social
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German: “picture”, “image”, “impression”
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transformation…”transforming self through transforming the social relations of teaching and learning”
(McLaren, 2005, 160).
Finally, there are a small number of [at present] minority languages also present in the debate. For example an
Islamic voice, calling for the “integrat[ion] [of] religious values into instruction across the
curriculum…[and]… service-learning in the family, the school and the community.” (Douglass, 2004) or a
Christian fundamentalist voice calling for curriculum to be structured by Biblical principles and ideas, are
likely to be heard more resoundingly in educational the debate in the future.
Competing languages and the world
The marked tension between these languages is caused not so much by preference differences or cultural
plurality than by the fundamental demand any language, in the form of connotative texts, presentations, oral
discussions and so on, be the vehicle of truthful description. This demand for “truthful description” is a
difficult and contested arena and the very possibility of providing such a description is questioned in
contemporary philosophy. Nevertheless, while perhaps not fashionable, questions of truth have not gone
away. In the analytical tradition, for instance the question of truth is central to positions held both by strong
realists [who claim statements possess objective truth-values but we may never know them] and anti-realists
[who say that such an assertion about a statement makes no sense]. Outside the analytical school, in those
philosophies that base themselves in “language games” (Wittgenstein), cultural practices or Lebenswelten, the
notion of truth also persists though here it has at best local meaning and criteria.
Despite the epistemological difficulties there is a demand also in much philosophy of education for at least
some robust notion of truth in descriptions of education as “they are closely bound up with the shared human
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interest in arriving at informed and considered judgements” (Norris, 2005). At the very least, we demand of
policy-makers, curriculum designers, educational psychologists and others that their descriptions of states of
affairs fulfil some criteria of “warranted assertibility” or, more broadly, a legitimation. This legitimation is
based on the language providing two things: first, a coherent and convincing relation of educational texts,
proposals and so on to reality and, secondly, a convincing, encouraging and reassuring narrative to those
involved in the educational process (Burbules, 1992). The first demand falters on the difficulties of
establishing “reality” and the second cultural, inter-subjective or shared legitimation does not appear to be
fulfilled by any of the educational languages in use in Ireland currently. Policy-makers, teachers, parents and
students do not seem to share a common, convincing re-assuring narrative. Though perhaps desired by many,
such a universal narrative cannot be expected to emerge. In fact, as will be argued below, any such emergence
should be regarded with suspicion as possibly all current educational narratives contain a fundamental flaw
that places them in the category of “ideology” in the sense used by Slavoj Zizek.
The discourses of Irish education as “ideologies”
A cursory glance at the forums in which these languages are used and the persons, bodies and organisations
that invoke them in the different power-relation domains of Irish education suggests one conclusion. These
languages of Irish education are not purely descriptive in the sense of being simply different ways of viewing
the same reality or indeed, to take a postmodern view, are relatively equal “stories”, “narratives” or language
games without any connection to a foundational social or natural reality. Neither is it generally the case that
educational researchers and practitioners adopt different languages simply depending on the demands of
function or purpose. These languages are crucially and to a large extent normative. They are used to legitimise
and justify educational policy and practice. They are also used as instruments to convince, encourage and
reassure public, politicians and educators that what is happening in modern education is grounded at least in a
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well reasoned narrative if not in either some kind of natural law of human development or some scientific
theory of brain-function. However, no matter what their genesis is, these languages are powerful social and
political instruments to construct collective imaginings and, though reminiscent of the grand narratives of
Lyotard (Lyotard, 1984), can also be understood and analysed as a new type of “ideology”.
However, the use of the term “ideology” at the beginning of the twenty-first century is not without its
difficulties. On the one hand, its use can conjure up the shadows of a now dismissed Marxist critique of
humankind’s productive-exploitive relationship with nature.. Even if a modern audience can resist the urge of
dismissing a moribund Marxism, there remains a central and ineluctable epistemological problem: recognising
and critiquing “ideology” requires epistemological reflection from a privileged “view from nowhere”
perspective on the world that would allow someone to discern the hidden [political, social…] mechanisms
behind language. The argument made consistently [and for most convincingly] is that this contemplativecritical attitude is not possible as all stances are rooted in, and dependent on, social and cultural factors so that
the key characteristic of an ideology as a false representation [whether intended or not] of some reality makes
no sense without privileged access to this reality. Simply, a critique of the languages of education as
ideological is only possible from a standpoint outside of language, beyond the realm of the symboliclinguistic. For most philosophers, this is not possible.
Despite these problems , the task not only of maintaining a concept of ideology but also of extending it and
using it in a modern theory of political subjectivity has been taken up by Slavoj Zizek. Zizek’s modern
extension of the notion of ideology and its critique together with his particular notion of subjectivity have not
as yet been taken up by the educational research community. However, aspects of his epistemology and
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particularly his radical reclaiming of the notion of the subject do suggest possible fruitful and interesting lines
of inquiry for thought on teaching and learning, self-formation and the boundaries of educational intervention.
Zizek is an iconic, almost cult, figure in recent European intellectual life7. A Slovenian philosopher and
cultural theorist, he has gained fame and notoriety in academic circles and beyond for his innovative,
flamboyant and idiosyncratic critique of modern culture. His academic interests are matched by an interest in
film criticism but significantly also by a political activism [he has stood for political office in Slovenia]. The
informing influences of his thought are the philosophy of Hegel and Lacan’s version of psychoanalysis. His
interpretation of Hegel and the use of the dialectic to understand the nature of modern ideology is the main
focus here but this is not possible without some discussion of the Lacanian ‘real’ in subjectivity. Briefly,
Zizek offers an anti-capitalist, anti-postmodernist, psychoanalytical interpretation of the dialectic. This
probably reads as ludicrously esoteric but it may not be. An important feature of both this analysis and of all
of the work of Zizek is its rootedness in a set of political and social concerns and aspirations. Philosophical
analysis, and in particular his critique of ideology, is always to be in the service of understanding and enabling
political change and transformation. He is also capable of reading Lacan through Stephen King!
One of the principal reasons for Zizek’s notoriety lies in his rejection and indeed pillorying of some of the
most prized notions of post-modernist thought and his radical re-introduction of concepts thought to have
been long banished to history. These radical re-inventions are evident in the three central tenets of Zizek’s
ontology as identified by Sharpe (Sharpe, 2004):

a return to the category of the subject
Terry Eagleton (2003) has described him as the most “formidably brilliant cultural theorist” to come out of Europe in the last
decades. Another commentator has suggested that he represents the closest thing possible to a philosopher on amphetamines.
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
a return to the category of ideology

a dialectical linking of these two using the notion of the Lacanian “real”.
Each one of these calls is controversial and provocative. The constitution of the self as autonomous, selftransparent, subject is one of the pillars of modernist thought but long since deemed, in many circles, a
toppled meta-narrative. Grounding and securing the central characteristics of the subject whether in the
cogito, in a transcendental system or in phenomenological reduction have given way to the historicity,
psychoanalytical and linguistic contingency of subjectivity evident in Althusser, Lacan, Derrida and Foucault.
Re-asserting the possibility of an almost Cartesian subject is a bold project.
Equally, the concept of ideology would seem to belong to a different age. The idea that a modern society, in
an age of mass education and global communications could be in a state of “false consciousness” about the
true material conditions of social life as seen by Marx and Engels is no longer tenable. The trouble with a
traditional Marxist view of ideology, though, is the particular notion of the “real” that is posited is completely
independent of and autonomous from the realm of the ideological. More recent thought has indicated that all
sense of the real is inherently connected to language, culture and ultimately to what previously was referred to
as ideology, blurring the important distinction. This has led many modern thinkers, for example Bourdieu,
Foucault and Rorty, to be sceptical of the use of the term at all. Nevertheless, Zizek contends that the idea
keeps on returning and while its meaning may be elusive, it nevertheless remains part of modern society.
Finally, Zizek provides an intriguing re-thinking of both subject and ideology using the same fundamental
idea inspired by Hegel’s Logic of the “negation” at the ontic root of both concepts. What follows is an attempt
to understand the nature and role of this “negation” or “antagonism” in Zizek’s critique and interrogate their
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possible impulses for educational thought. First, however, the main structural features of Zizek’s notion of
ideology are outlined.
Zizek’s three forms of ideology
In his description of the nature of modern ideology, Zizek uses Hegel to understand three groups of different
notions of ideology that are related in a dialectical triad (Zizek, 1994). These three groups are worth
examining in some more detail and then applying to the languages of education.
First, there is what Zizek refers to as ideology “in-itself”. The term derives from Hegel’s “an-sich” referring to
something that is considered not connected to other things or unreflective. This group refers to the wellknown, common understanding of an ideology as simply a false doctrine or discourse that consciously
misrepresents salient facts about society and state. It is a blunt but often effective instrument of a power
external to the individual used to support the interests of an elite. Examples of “repressive state apparatuses”
(Althusser, 1971) that have used this form of ideology abound in the twentieth century and have been
analysed and critiqued most importantly by Habermas in his critique of positivism, Gadamer’s “hermeneutic”
and functionalism (Habermas, 1967).
The second group of notions can be referred to as ideology “for-itself”. Hegel used this term for something
internal, reflective and self-comprehending. These notions represent not a misinterpretation from an outsider
or external authority but the internal inculcating of individuals into (ideologically) determined societal roles
and behaviour. This is done not by means of propaganda but by passing on, from youth, ritualised practices
and disciplines that become, as it were, part of the person themselves. In most cases these discourses do not
ever have to be made explicit to the individual, although the institutions that engage in the passing on of
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meanings and practices, church, education systems, political groups and legal institutions may have explicit
aims and texts. However, a characteristic of this kind of ideology is precisely the move from text to practice.
This kind of ideology is therefore deeply ingrained in the fabric of society and perpetuated by customs and
practices in upbringing and education. So pervasive and unavoidable are these influences that some thinkers,
notably Althusser (Althusser, 1994), have claimed that there is no possible means of escape leading to his
pessimism of ever achieving freedom.
Finally and most significantly for his critique of ideology there is the ideology type that Zizek refers to as
ideology “in-and-for-itself”. This is neither the explicit doctrine of the repressive state nor the imbibed and
implicit values and attitudes of a particular kind of socialisation but the elusive, seductive but plausible
illusion that our practices, political, economic and sexual, are free, autonomous and non-ideological. In this
ultimate form of ideology, the ideological merges with the real to become the ultimate non-ideological
ideology. Persuaded that we are free particularly in our sexual and consumerist practices, we are convinced
that we are no longer subject to external or internal discourses. We have never been so free, so selfdetermining and the conditions of the social world that have brought this about are, in consequence, selfevident and require no further logic of legitimacy. The argument most commonly made is that the facts speak
for themselves and the “way forward” is clear and obvious. Crucially this type of ideology works at the level
of spontaneous actuality, at the level of attitudes and desires and not at the level of rationality and critique. At
its core is an ideology not of thoughts but of seduction. Consumerism [or the fetishisation of commodities, to
use Zizek’s Marxist term (Zizek, 1989, 23)] is an ideology that does not work on the level of discourse and
argument but on the level of distraction and image-saturation so that the subject never reaches a point at
which she/he asks salient political or social questions about the truths of late-capitalism.
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Before proceeding to investigate how Zizek constructs a critique of all three forms of ideology, it is perhaps
worthwhile to examine how our languages of education can be construed to be operative on one or more of
these levels. While it is difficult to view any of the contemporary languages of education as an Engelian
doctrine designed to produce “false consciousness” in children or adult learners, both children and adults are
the subjects of distorted messages from media and other sources intent on sustaining vested social interests
and shaping senses of “self”. At this level, ideology is recognised when there is a gap between the espoused
content and the presuppositions behind the message.
More immediately recognisable is perhaps the performance model of ideology. From at least the Middle Ages,
education in the form of schooling has been characterised by the performance of intricate and often
unquestioned behaviours and rituals. These rituals, learned at a very early age, do not have to be written down
or published in manifestos; they are, as Foucault (1979) has argued inscribed directly on bodies by
disciplinary procedures of everyday school life [disciplining, drilling, scheduling examining]. Finally, Zizek
illuminates the most subtle and pervasive form of ideology that presents itself not in argument or in practice
but by reference to its self-evidence. In this form, ideology is presented as non-ideological precisely because
the claims made are “based on the facts”. No one can deny that economic growth is good and to argue that
education might have another goal other than sustaining and promoting the creation of wealth is clearly to fly
in the face of the obvious. Secondly, in this form ideology no longer relies on the instruments of language or
ritual but [perhaps more effectively] address directly the realms of human fantasy and desire. Fantasy
“constitutes our desire” (Zizek, 1997, p4) and is not dream nor illusion but part of reality. In educational
terms, since this modern form of ideology addresses the unconscious in the learner rather than consciousness
any attempt to counteract ideology in this form with an “older” form based on language, narrative or ritual is
misguided. As Zizek states “It is as if in late capitalism [also] ‘words do not count’, no longer oblige: they
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increasingly seem to lose their performative power: whatever one says is drowned in the general indifference:
the emperor is naked…, yet nobody seems really to mind” (Zizek, 1994, p.18). With particular irony, it might
be argued that the language of the “economic agenda”, while seeming to be based on hard facts and global
commercial reality is really an ideology of fantasy, desire and the libidinous. Our investment in education is
based not so much on percentages of GDP as on constructing learners’ worlds of consumer freedom and
illusory self-realisation and self-determination. It follows that if social reality is, at least in parts of the western
world, as much a play of “regimes of fantasy and enjoyment” rather than about material conditions and
meaning, then the concept of truth, central to a traditional critique of ideology as well to, at least some,
schools of educational theory, is no longer relevant since fantasies and pleasure do not have truth-values. We
can even be convinced on a conceptual level that our view of the world is off-kilter and nevertheless still
embrace it! The rational understanding and acceptance that a neo-capitalist, market-driven theory of
education is inadequate or even wrong is not sufficient to change behaviour that is being directed by desires.
This suggests the disturbing possibility that ideology no longer blinds people to the true state of affairs in the
world but implicates the individual in moral and ethical relationships of justice rather than truth.
This descriptive analysis of late-capitalist ideology can throw light on any number of cultural phenomena
including, as indicated above, the languages and discourses of education. However, as convincing as it
perhaps appears, its power stands alone on the possibility of the concept of ideology as such. In other words,
the very use of the term is predicated on the ability of Zizek to maintain the distinction between the realms of
the real and the ideological. Establishing this distinction, particularly in the light of ideology “in-and-foritself” is not a simple task. In the following I will examine briefly the way in which Zizek argues for the
distinction by developing an idiosyncratic notion of the real and the resulting redrawing of the notion of the
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“subject”. I argue that particularly his view of the subject could influence an understanding of education at
variance with many of our current descriptions.
What or where is the “real”?
As Sharpe points out, (Sharpe, 2004), Zizek is aware that establishing a place for the “real” or the “true” at
least since Nietzsche is a difficult task. It is a feature of almost all European thinking of the last century that
accessing or establishing Truth or truths in some space beyond the horizons of language and Lebenswelt [as
the two boundaries of the modernist project] is deeply problematical. For many commentators, there are no
truths possible outside of discourse and there can be no extra-ideological reality. At best, as post-structuralists
will point out, there is an infinity of representations with perhaps “local” truths. It would seem impossible for
the human subject to transcend the historical, cultural and linguistic context. And yet, Zizek’s biography, his
experience of the cynical reason that deflated the ideological and discursive truths of Communist Yugoslavia
and the dawning of an era of unbridled, global late-capitalism, has convinced him, first, of the possibility of
stepping outside ideological hegemony. Acts of cynical distance, humour and irony were possible for many
who lived in communist societies who behaved as is they were duped by state ideology but whose selfunderstanding was grounded in a different set of beliefs. Secondly, he also realises that the part of the body
under siege by modern ideologies is no longer the rational consciousness of the Cartesian subject8 but the
Freudian/Lacanian unconscious and so that the place to find freedom from the ideological must lie outside the
realm of modernist rationality but also beyond the desires and fantasms of the unconscious.
8
Zizek is, of course, not the first philosopher to challenge the Cartesian view of the subject. The philosophy of the 20th century has
sought grounds for subjectivation in, among others, the “body” or “text” and “trans-subjective will and power”. These accounts too
have had [perhaps subtle] influence on how contemporary education plays a part in the construction of the subject.
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So the reality of lived political cynicism and change in the recent history of Europe together with a revived
notion of the subject provide Zizek with the evidence for the possibility for an Archimedean point for the
illumination and critique of ideology. However, and crucially, this point or space of freedom if it is to avoid
falling itself into ideology must occupy a strange realm outside of symbolic narrative. The traditional idea of
situating this “real” point that opposes ideology in rational subjectivity is no longer viable. Modern ideologies,
as indicated, target not the realm of ideas but the realms of affectivity and enjoyment. Eagleton remarks that
according to Zizek ideological power rests in the libidinal and not in the conceptual “in the way we hug our
chains rather than the way we entertain certain beliefs” (Eagleton, 2003, p. 198). Consequentially, the only
place to investigate the possibility of escaping ideology is in the unconscious [problematic]. He therefore
distinguishes clearly between two realms in the subject: that of “reality” and the “real”. Reality is the realm of
the linguistic-symbolic. It is the realm both of reason and fantasy and thus of ideology: a place in which the
meanings of social reality are ordered and shared. The realm of the ‘Real’ in contrast refers to a place in the
human subject within the very realm of the symbolic but which is utterly different from it. that avoids the
subjugating grip of ideology, destabilises and disrupts meanings.
The notion of the ‘Real’ in Zizek is central not only to his critique of ideology but also is at the core of his
revival of the category of the subject and his theory of political agency. It is not a thoroughly new idea and the
suggestion of an ultimately inscrutable subject and the inability of any ideology to comprehensively
encompass the nature of the subject does not appear for the first time with Zizek. In his careful and, at times
idiosyncratic, reading of both Kant and Hegel, he attests to the long history of acknowledging that the
category of the subject is one that defies positive and coherent description pointing to an insurmountable gap
in all descriptions. Kant, for instance, recognised that the empirical ‘I’ is separate from the ‘I’ of
transcendental apperception; that I can be an object of perception and thought for myself yet cannot
17
experience myself as the “Thing which thinks” (Zizek, 1993, p. 15) 9. In a deeply significant way then, “selfconsciousness is positively founded on the non-transparency of the subject to itself” (Zizek, 1993, p. 128).
This old insight at the core of Kantian antimonies has, according Zizek, been neglected. Specifically in the
case of some schools of modern psychology and educational theories based on them, there is still a strong
belief in the possibility of “knowing oneself. Similarly, in his reading of Hegel who saw perhaps most clearly
that reality [and with it the learning subject] could be understood in co-existing opposites, Zizek rejects the
usual interpretation of the dialectical move to a harmonious synthesis of these opposites. He argues that Hegel
can be understood as radically asserting and upholding this division in the subject rather than overcoming
(Aufheben) it. Kant searched for a transcendent domain beyond this tension of finite opposites, while Hegel
weaves “[the] gap into the very texture of reality” (Zizek, 2006, p. 27). Finally, some of his more recent
writing, Zizek claims that the same incomplete, non-transparent subject, aware of a lack or void at the core of
its being, is central at least to the Pauline dialectic in Christianity. (Zizek, 2000, 2003).
This fundamental gap or tear in the fabric of the reality prevents any coherent symbolisation of the nature of
things. In fact the reality of the subject lies precisely in this “non-symbolisable traumatic kernel” (Zizek,
1994, 26). Reality is never “whole”, complete or harmonious. This empty, inaccessible void at the heart of the
subject is nonetheless effective. Functioning metaphorically as a “black hole” the ‘Real’ is made visible by its
power to generate the fantasies that human beings need to fill the emptiness, and herein lies the
psychoanalytical side of Zizek’s thought. Ideologies, in as much as they provide coherent, harmonious and
clean structures of symbolic meaning, though they attempt this, will always fail to grasp human beings and the
world in so far as they fail to recognise the void at the core of subjectivity. Meaning, far from being settled
and stable, carries at its core a point of negation, antagonism and disruption; the seeds of its very destruction.
In Kantian terms, the “noumenal” self can never appear “phenomenally” to itself because then the difference between the
noumenal and phenomenal would collapse.
9
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Much more could be said about the manner in which the way in which we think, desire and fantasise can be
interpreted as our way of dealing and living with this sublime lack. Zizek’s most controversial work is
concerned with the psychoanalytical aspect of the subject-as-void. His central psychoanalytical concept of
“jouissance” as the pain-pleasure that human beings experience when they encounter the limitations of both
imagination and reason of all experience is hotly contested but cannot be pursued here. However, it is worth
noting that one of the possible weaknesses of his analysis lies precisely in the fact “he uncritically assumes the
legitimacy of casually sliding back and forth between, on the one hand, Freudian-Lacanian metapsychology,
and, on the other hand, analyses of socio-cultural phenomena” (Johnston, 2007, 65).Thus, though his theory of
the fundamental lack or antagonism at the core of the subject may be convincing, it may be a category error to
make the same claim for social realities. If, despite this caveat, the project is undertaken, some interesting
possibilities emerge.
Why we cannot educate the whole person!
Some of these consequences and possibilities for further thought on the status and nature of the languages of
education and also of the category of the subject in education are already probably evident but perhaps bear
summarising. First, Zizek’s description of the types of ideology can provide a means of understanding the
different modalities of modern educational language. Recognising “ideology in itself” as an external
imposition and conscious manipulation of knowledge and information is not difficult to achieve in these times
of multiple sources of information. Increasingly too, the type of “ideology for itself” as the reproduction in
schooling of particular sets of rituals and practices is subjected to examination and critique. And the category
of “ideologies-in-and-for-themselves” does appear to throw light on contemporary narratives that are selfreferencing, seductive and largely unquestioned.
19
More importantly, Zizek’s analysis provides a way in which to recognise language as ideology. If we accept
his conclusion that the multiplicity of perceptions and languages reveals the fundamental “lack” that prevents
a complete symbolisation of the nature of a thing, then we have a benchmark for detecting language as
ideology. Any description that does not admit of a fundamental disruptive, “antagonistic”, non-symbolic core
challenging any possibility of settled meaning is ideological. Thus descriptions that claim to be holistic,
comprehensive and defining cannot be true! In all cases, something always eludes both language and
perspective. Reality defies symbolisation. As a consequence, while different languages of education can and
will be used in the communication of ideas, policies and practices, no one of them can never be complete,
positivistic determination of the nature of education.
A second, and perhaps more important, consequence of Zizek’s thought is that not only is the learning subject
not made transparent in any language of education, she is not totally transparent to herself in her own
rationality [at least not without extending the idea of rationality]. I cannot know myself with my logo-centric
reason! There remains always a kernel or empty space at the centre of self which remains hidden even to selfreflection. As a result, the subject cannot be grasped fully in any hermeneutic or linguistic programme of
constructed realities mediated by languages. This standpoint is in obvious contrast to that of the poststructuralists and post-modernists who claim that subjectivation comes about when human beings are
subjected to the “symbolic order”, being born into a language and never managing to escape. It is also in
contrast to cherished views on education as gaining knowledge of self and the world through engagement with
knowledge. Educational practices, based as they are in the realm of the symbolic and ideologically ritual,
cannot reach encompass the whole human being. In a radical way, education, at least in the ways we usually
speak about it, can never be “holistic”!
20
Zizek challenges the view that human subjects are completely described by historical, cultural and linguistic
determinants and the resulting politically and socially dubious relativism. He stands in stark contrast to the
anti-subjectivity evident in analytical and hermeneutic philosophy which often reject the notion of autonomy
and emphasise the external forces that form individuals. At the same time he avoids any “other-worldly”
grand metaphysical schemes that explain the self and the world in comforting, complete coherent theory. The
real is the fragile subject struggling with the void at its core. This view offers a fresh way of imagining the
learner as subject and a challenging framework for the critique of educational discourses that seem deserving
of a wider reception in educational theory.
21
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