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Empty signifiers, education and politics

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Abstract

The paper assumes that education is part of the process of discursive construction of society. The theoretical framework on which this argument is based includes Ernesto Laclau’s theory of the “ontological impossibility and political necessity of society”, and the role discourse and empty signifiers play in the establishment of political identities. Laclau’s theory is supplemented here by ideas of Derrida, Lacan, Žižek and Marx, and by other traits in contemporary semiotics that relate to the notion of “the void” in semantic systems. My claim is that empty signifiers, crucial to the production of the totality of society, are discursively produced, among others, in pedagogical debates. This is illustrated by one historical example (Rouuseau), which gives ground for more contemporary analyses, and on the basis of the present economic discourse of educating and the idea of “knowledge society”. The main conclusion is that education, in contemporary discourse of learning, becomes a neurotic symptom of the lack of overt domination in social relations.

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Notes

  1. In Allgemeine Paedagogik aus der Zweck der Erziehung Abgeleitetet,considered to lay a foundation for pedagogy as independent academic discipline, J.F.Herbart grounds pedagogy in ethics, whence he roots educational goals, and psychology, which is to provide for instruments of upbringing and instruction (Herbart, 1876).

  2. Of course there is no logical ground for this conclusion. It is a substitution that reflects the dominant role that economy plays in public discourse of Western societies, and therefore a mere act of discourse colonisation (Leitch and Roper, 1998, Fine and Green, 2000).

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  1. Institute of Education, University of Gdañsk, Ul. Krzywoustego 19, Gdansk, 80-952, Poland

    Tomasz Szkudlarek

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Szkudlarek, T. Empty signifiers, education and politics. Stud Philos Educ 26, 237–252 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-007-9033-7

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