Abstract
The Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek mainly refers to concepts taken from Hegel’s idealism and Lacan’s psychoanalysis, and rarely takes a direct account of educational issues. Nonetheless, he is dealing with important pedagogical concepts; therefore, his work should be taken up as a provocative ‘interruption’ in the field of pedagogy and educational philosophy. His ‘negative’ thinking of subjectivity (in terms of a ‘void’, ‘lack’ or ‘desire’) results, amongst other things, in a critique of how concepts like learning or knowledge are shaped by the current politics of education. The ‘expertise’ granting a rational and transparent handling of educational processes and likewise the transformation of the educational system are challenged by the insight that the back side of this may be called ‘excess’ or ‘madness’. This flipping perspective coincidentally reveals the ideology we take part in, precisely because it organises our desire and behaviour. But instead of leading to a dead-end, new prospectives for ‘emancipation’ are emerging here, not intimately tied to the ‘enlightenment’ any more, but to a critical stance under conditions of subjectivity in antagonistic, paradox socio-symbolic orders.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
“The human being is this night, this empty nothing, that contains everything in its simplicity – an unending wealth of many representations, images, of which none belongs to him – or which are not present”.(Hegel, cit. Žižek 1999: 29).
- 3.
We also want to mention the Anthology “Žižek and Education”, edited by Antonio Garcia, which is already announced as forthcoming in two volumes (see: https://www.facebook.com/ZizekAndEducation; Accessed: 11 Sep 2016).
- 4.
The interview is available on YouTube (see Det Kongelige Bibliotek 2014).
- 5.
Boltanski and Chiapello (2007), for example, are explaining how ideas like autonomy and creativity have switched their meaning in the twentieth century: from the articulation of subversive interventions against the process of alienation in contemporary fordism to the point of promotion of the postfordist conditions of production.
- 6.
Žižek (2008c) never gets tired of emphasising the permanence of ongoing social divisions and contradictions as society in principle.
- 7.
Another issue is Žižek’s struggle to cultivate anti-capitalist positions, which brings him into quarrels with Laclau and many other thinkers (see Heil 2010: 139ff.).
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References to Movies
Chales de Beaulieu, S., & Farkas, J.-B. (2006). Alien, Marx & Co. – Slavoj Žižek im Porträt.
Fiennes, S. (2011). The Pervert’s guide to ideology.
Taylor, A. (2005). Žižek! The Elvis of Cultural Theory.
References on Online Sources
Det Kongelige Bibliotek. (2014). Slavoj Žižek and Paul Holdengräber: “Surveillance and whistleblowers” – International Authors’ Stage, May 19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIPjmmmh_os. Accessed 1 Sept 2016.
Plato: Symposium. Written 360 B.C.E (B. Jowett, Trans). http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html. Accessed 1 Sept 2016.
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Mayer, R., Schenk, S. (2018). Žižek. In: Smeyers, P. (eds) International Handbook of Philosophy of Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72761-5_38
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