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 art with a broad conception of the practice of education. 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 – inter- subjectivity. 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 co- ordinations 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 the ‘seven veils’ that Zizek identifies in this chapter – the 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 earlier text page introduced the idea of society’s images, figures, and metaphors being ‘symptoms’ – and now we have a better idea of what might be causing them: fantasmatic formations underpinning the various practices of social life. So the task in this second half will be to consider a selected range of figures, etc. that have some potential to offer insight into the processes of education, even though they may not feature on any teacher training course. In each case we shall attempt to identify what form of ‘veiling’ is likely to be involved and then consider why its social significance is currently ignored.

I. Athena - goddess of wisdom, justice, civilisation, strategic warfare, the female arts, and the virgin patron of Athens. She is the daughter of Metis, a Titan, whom Zeus swallowed after coupling with her so as to avoid a prophesy that their progeny would be greater than himself. But Metis was already pregnant and gave birth to Athena inside Zeus. Later, suffering from a terrible headache, Zeus asked Hephaestus to split open his forehead, from which Athena burst forth fully armed with weapons given to her by her mother.

The principal fantasy at play here would seem to be what Zizek calls the ‘impossible gaze’ – referring both to the reconfiguration of the symbolic register and the narrative creation of a self-witnessed moment of ‘birth’ to account for the change. Athena, as the patron of Athens, was depicted as only accepting Zeus as a source of authority higher than her own; hence her virgin status so that within Greek patriarchal society she had no husband to obey or son to recognise and eventually confer her authority upon. Equally, as patron of Athens she effectively supplanted Zeus, hence her association with law-giving and the arts of civilisation, her warrior status, and her ability to use intellect for both warfare and essential domestic skills.

II. Pandora - first woman and the origin of evil. Her name means ‘all-gifted’, since each god gave her a unique gift to add to her seductive charms. Zeus had ordered Hephaestus to mould her out of earth as a ‘beautiful evil’ – to balance the benefits of fire given to men by Prometheus. Epimetheus, his brother, accepted her as a wife – despite Prometheus’ warning. For her dowry she brought a jar holding all the evils of the world, and once on Earth she opened it, releasing them, until only hope remained inside it.

One obvious ‘veil’ is the first – the transcendental schematism of desire, and using this Pandora become the emblematic fantasy figure that teaches men how to desire. But more troubling interpretations arise if we focus instead on the inter-subjective. Lacan gives three variants here: the inter-subjective itself, the entry into the symbolic register, and the agalma – that within me that is worth more than myself. Pandora introduces all the mysteries, risks and specific co- ordinations within the symbolic order that are intrinsic to gendered inter-subjectivity – for women as well as men. Meanwhile, her entry into the symbolic order is as the carrier of the Real – the troubles and confusions that constantly irrupt through the ordered surface of things. And finally, hope itself is her agalma, that within her that is greater than herself. D.M.B. 2011