Curriculum Inquiry ISSN: 0362-6784 (Print) 1467-873X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcui20 Identification, language, and subjectivity: Reading Freire through/against Lacan Kevin J. Holohan To cite this article: Kevin J. Holohan (2017) Identification, language, and subjectivity: Reading Freire through/against Lacan, Curriculum Inquiry, 47:5, 446-464, DOI: 10.1080/03626784.2017.1396873 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2017.1396873 Published online: 16 Nov 2017. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 170 View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rcui20 CURRICULUM INQUIRY, 2017 VOL. 47, NO. 5, 446–464 https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2017.1396873 Identification, language, and subjectivity: Reading Freire through/against Lacan Kevin J. Holohan Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, MI, USA ABSTRACT KEYWORDS This paper aims to interrogate Freirean critical pedagogy via the work of Jacques Lacan in order to shed new light on psychoanalytic issues that arise when engaging in critical pedagogical work. First, through a close reading of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the author delineates Freire’s conception of the human subject, the mechanisms that function to oppress subjects and prevent full humanization, and the process by which subjects can begin to imagine new possibilities outside of the oppressor/oppressed relationship. Next, careful consideration is given to Lacan’s formulation of the function of the imaginary in the emergence of the subject, which was most clearly articulated in his seminal work The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience. This engagement with these two thinkers emphasizes what Lacan can teach us about the complex relationship between identity construction, subjectivity, and the role of intersubjective relations in theorizing and creating a more just world. Critical pedagogy; identity construction; intersubjectivity; psychoanalytic theory While the theoretical work and goals of Paulo Freire and Jacques Lacan are, in many ways, incompatible, each explores the historical, social, and linguistic contingency of knowledge, meaning, and the meaning-making process. They suggest that the subject is called up and, following Althusser (1971/2001), interpellated by the broader socio-symbolic universe into which it is thrown. That is, there is not a fundamental essence lying at the centre of a subject. Instead, subjects are characterized by a lack, a void that is sutured – but not filled in – as their lives are lived within the broader discourses circulating in a particular time and place. To suggest that subjects are moulded by pre-existing signifiers and their relationship to one another in signifying chains, or in other words, to define subjects as missing any fundamental core over which they can exercise some degree of autonomous control, appears to preclude notions of universality upon which many emancipatory political and educational projects are based. However, this void – the gap between being and the representation of being through pre-existing discourses – suggests both the impossibility of wholly self-conscious individual agency in inscribing one’s experience with meaning and the possibility of re-inscribing meaning on the individual and collective CONTACT Kevin J. Holohan holohank@gvsu.edu © 2017 the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education READING FREIRE THROUGH LACAN 447 level. Rather than suggesting a move away from the possibilities of realizing these critical projects, psychoanalytic theory offers a more robust theoretical basis for pursuing them. Utilizing Lacan’s concept of the imaginary and the ways in which desire fuels our unconscious attachments, in this article, I interrogate Freire’s notions of the identificatory processes of oppressed subjects and highlight the affective dimensions of engaging in critical pedagogical work. I draw attention to what Lacan can teach us about the complex relationship that exists between identity construction, subjectivity, and the role of intersubjective relations in theorizing, educating toward, and creating a more just world. The central claim of this article is that the images reflected back to us – from parents, teachers, media spectacles, and curricular artefacts – form our fundamental sense of being, wholeness, coherence and, thus, set the limits for our action in the material world. Though we retain an unconscious attachment to those images, even if they work against our material self-interest or equal footing in social relations, the pedagogical exchange may also open up the space for us to imagine and act otherwise. What Can Lacan Teach Us About Transformative Pedagogy? There has been a long-standing interest among critical theorists and scholars in developing a theory of consciousness and depth psychology that helps to explain the individual, subjective dimensions of liberation and domination. In Theory and Resistance in Education, Giroux (1983) effectively summarizes the work of the Frankfurt School on the question of “how a dehumanized society could continue to maintain its control over its inhabitants, and how it was possible that human beings could participate willingly at the level of everyday life in the reproduction of their own dehumanization and exploitation” (p. 22). In looking to answer this question, Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Fromm each turned to a critical study of Freud. First, Freud provided a formal psychological structure within which to work, with its underlying struggle between Eros (the life instinct), Thanatos (the death drive), and the outside world. Second, Freud’s studies on psychopathology, the tendencies toward human self-destructiveness, and the decline of the influence of the family in contemporary society added to the Frankfurt School’s analyses of mass society and the authoritarian personality. Finally, Freud’s theory of instincts and metapsychology helped the Frankfurt School develop a theoretical framework for understanding the objective and psychological obstacles to social change. As Giroux (1983) explains: The Frankfurt School theorists believed that it was only in an understanding of the dialectic between the individual and society that the depth and extent of domination as it existed both within and outside of the individual could be open to modification and transformation. (p. 22) This paper proceeds with a similar conviction, as well as a belief that Jacques Lacan’s rereading of Freud could provide further illumination on the aforementioned questions. Within the context of critical educational theory, interrogating Freire through Lacan serves to highlight the mutual dependence between structure and agency. Insofar as Freire’s and Lacan’s theories of the subject, alienation, and autonomy are predicated upon, first, an Imaginary identification with the Other (be it the “imago” in Lacan or the “oppressor” in Freire), second, a subject’s subjection to a pre-existing socio-symbolic order 448 KEVIN J. HOLOHAN structured by language, and third, a the fundamental contingency of the Symbolic order, both theorists recognize the inhibiting/oppressive effects on subjects’ development while also offering ways of imagining moving beyond alienation and objectification. However, Lacan’s theory of the psycho-social constitution of subjectivity offers new ways of thinking about the necessary precursors to transformation (individual as well as social) often unaccounted for in Freirean critical pedagogy. What is Lacking in Freirean Critical Pedagogy? This project begins with a fundamental question: how can critical pedagogy as developed in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed be reimagined through Lacan’s re-articulation of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory? To posit such an inquiry requires that we ask another question: what is lacking in Freirean critical pedagogy? Within educational theory and scholarship, there have been a number of critiques levelled against the critical pedagogy movement inspired by Paulo Freire’s (1970/1993) work with Brazilian peasants as documented in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Broadly defined, these critiques have largely emanated from feminist scholars, critical race theorists, and postmodern and poststructural theorists. These scholars have highlighted issues or perspectives within the literature of critical pedagogy that have been privileged, silenced, and/or undertheorized. Some of these critiques challenge the fundamental epistemological and ontological foundations of critical discourses within education as rooted primarily in the project of the Western Enlightenment (Apple, 1990; Biesta, 2005; Gur-Ze’ev, 2005; Heilman, 2005; Popkewitz & Fendler, 1999). Others challenge the notion of so-called radical social transformation, shed light upon the privileging of reason, progress, and a utopian future (Gur-Ze’ev, 2005), and call into question critical pedagogues’ power positions in attempts to initiate the subject’s emancipation from oppressive social and psychological conditions (Ellsworth, 1989; Weiler, 1991). Feminist scholars have aimed their critiques at the largely male-centred notions of oppression, alienation, and liberation that dominate the works of early and contemporary critical theorists and pedagogues (Heilman, 2005; Luke & Gore, 1992). What these varied critiques hold in common is a questioning of Freire’s tendency toward essentializing the subjectivity, positionality, and lived experience of what he frames as the oppressed and oppressor. Some of the most significant calls for re-examination and re-articulation of Freire’s work emanate from Feminist theory and scholarship. While acknowledging the importance of Freire’s life and work, Kathleen Weiler (1991) questions some of the epistemological assumptions underlying his projects. Weiler (1991) focuses her critique of Freire on the lack of attention given to the tensions and confusion that arise in the student–teacher relationship as a result of the continuing divisions along the lines of gender, race, sexual preference, physical ability, and age. According to Weiler, while both Freirean pedagogy and feminist pedagogy “hold a strong commitment to justice and a vision of a better world and of the potential for liberation” (p. 450), Freirean pedagogy does not address the specificity of people’s lives, the contradictions between conflicting oppressed groups, the problem of multiple competing ideas of the causes and solutions to oppression or how a single individual may occupy both privileged and oppressed identities simultaneously. That is, in defining the oppressed as a monolithic and homogenous category, Freire ignores important differences in the way different individuals may experience oppression and also ignores the possibilities for overlapping forms READING FREIRE THROUGH LACAN 449 of oppression where an individual may be oppressed in one context and the oppressor in another, or perhaps oppressed in one context but not another. For example, a woman may experience gender oppression, but if she is white, she may also occupy a position of power in relationship to people of colour. Another significant engagement with Freirean critical pedagogy can be found in Elizabeth Ellsworth’s (1989) “Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy,” one of the most highly cited critiques of the critical pedagogy movement. In the article, Ellsworth describes her experience teaching an undergraduate course on media and anti-racist pedagogies. According to Ellsworth, the literature on critical pedagogy implies that students and teachers should engage each other as fully rational subjects and that the foundation for classroom interaction is reason. However, she goes on to explain that “the myths of the ideal rational person and the ‘universality’ of propositions have been oppressive to those who are not European, White, male, middle-class, Christian, able-bodied, thin, and heterosexual” (p. 96). Within critical pedagogy, the privileging of reason, the often-unchallenged authoritarian nature of the teacher/student relationship, and the ambiguous definition and nature of the very idea of empowerment leads to the failure to explicitly challenge, in Ellsworth’s words, “any identifiable social or political position, institution, or group” (p. 99). Most relevant and important to the current project is Ellsworth’s claim that critical pedagogy fails to address the fact that the particularities of historical context, personal biography, and subjectivities split between the conscious and unconscious will necessarily render each expression of student voice partial and predicated on the absence and marginalization of alternative voices. (p. 103) This includes both contexts outside and exterior to the subject as well as those other influential forces silenced or repressed within the subject her/himself. As detailed above, Paulo Freire’s theory of critical pedagogical practice as expressed in Pedagogy of the Oppressed has been shown to be wanting in a number of ways. It posits a unified and centred subject that does not account for diverse and contradictory forms and contexts of oppressions, or for the affective, delusional, and unconscious aspects of subjectivity. Rational inquiry and individual autonomy are privileged over experiential insight and intersubjective interdependence. However, a number of scholars have utilized psychoanalytic theory as a means of foregrounding the connections among structural and institutional oppression and individual psychic trauma, alienation, and neuroses within educational contexts. Freirean critical pedagogy is centrally concerned with the dynamics of oppression, the relationship between oppressor and oppressed, and the pedagogical processes whereby the transformation of oppression and movement toward freedom are made possible (Freire, 1998). As critical pedagogy generally, and the work of Paulo Freire more specifically, has attempted to deal with the questions of subjectivity and the trauma that accompanies alienation and marginalization, educational theorists have highlighted the tradition’s lack of attention to subjective experience, affective dimensions, and the role of the unconscious in these complex events. In turning to psychoanalytic theory, several vital contributions have been made to help fill out our understanding of the psychical underpinnings of critical pedagogical endeavours. 450 KEVIN J. HOLOHAN Deborah Britzman’s work has been pioneering in illuminating the role of the unconscious in teaching, learning, pedagogy, and encounters with “difficult knowledge” (Britzman, 1998, 2000, 2013). In examining teaching and learning through a psychoanalytic lens, Britzman troubles conceptions of knowledge transmission and foregrounds the role of subjectivity in the learning process, as well as the disavowals, repressions, and trauma that almost always accompany educational encounters. Enriching the discussion at hand, Britzman (2017) argues that oppression and depression cannot be teased apart and considered distinct experiences and/or phenomena for, as she explains, “both create an emptiness of affective life that unnerves the primacy of the subject’s capacity to communicate, belong, and desire thinking” (p. 83). In defining the project of psychoanalysis as “anti-depression” and the politics of education as “anti-oppression,” Britzman poignantly reminds us that these endeavours are intimately intertwined. Other scholars have built upon and extended the work of Britzman and other psychoanalytic theorists of education to underscore the subjective dimensions and psychical processes that come to bear upon critical pedagogical endeavours (see Amsler, 2011; Taylor, 2011). In light of this work, it becomes important to consider how we can bridge the divide between the psychic and the social as we consider the intersections between the inner life of the learner and the social trauma one is often confronted with in educational settings (Zembylas, 2013a, 2013b, 2014). In doing so, it seems crucial to take account of how subjective identifications and unconscious attachments may impede or promote the work of critical educators. The work of the aforementioned scholars has advanced our understanding of what psychoanalytic thought can offer to educational endeavours concerned with redressing oppression on the individual and socio-political level. However, there are others who have drawn more explicitly from the work of Jacques Lacan to help us think anew about the relationship between the pedagogical encounter, identify formation, subjectivity, and transformation. This work points to the inescapable alienation we all experience upon entering a system of language that precedes us but that has a formative yet unconscious impact upon our sense of who we are (Appel, 1995; Taubman, 2012). We are reminded that rational analysis of external systems of oppression such as capitalism, patriarchy, or racism are insufficient for understanding dissatisfaction, misery, and violence; it is necessary to also look within and to recognize our inherent incompleteness (Appel, 1996). Most relevant for this study, psychoanalysis prompts us to consider the ways in which oppressive social relations are, according to Cho and Lewis (2005), “libidinally invested” and, thus, require an examination of the unconscious to fully understand their functioning. In other words, the subjectivity of student and teacher come out of, and are driven by, unconscious desires and intersubjective relations shaped by material conditions. While Lacan was fundamentally concerned with the role of the unconscious in moulding subjectivity and viewed material conditions primarily as a projection of internal dynamics, Freire focused his attention on the ways in which material conditions shaped people’s lives. However, we need not choose between a materialist analysis of oppression or an analysis of the internalized, subjective workings of oppression to inform critical educational projects (Cho, 2007; Cho & Lewis, 2005; Roseboro, 2008). As Cho and Lewis (2005) explain, “in order to eliminate potential forms of subtle, yet persistent, oppression,” sometimes missed in the work of critical pedagogues, “we must analyze the asymmetrical tension between unconscious attachments to hierarchical modes of power and the transformative READING FREIRE THROUGH LACAN 451 intentions of Freire’s pedagogy of freedom” (p. 316). Theorizing a pedagogy of the oppressed through Lacanian thought and the role of the Imaginary in identity construction can move this analytic project forward. Freire’s Conception of the Subject and Subjectivity In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire does not explicitly define a theory of the subject or subjectivity, but there are many clues throughout his work from which we can surmise a definition. In doing so, it seems necessary to begin with Freire’s notion of “the oppressed” because this concept is the nexus of much of the other ontological and epistemological categories he develops in the book. Freire (1970/1993) provides specific definitions of oppression and oppressive relationships when he states: “Any situation in which ‘A’ objectively exploits ‘B’ or hinders his and her pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person is one of oppression” (p. 55). He then writes, “An act is oppressive only when it prevents people from being more fully human” (p. 57). Because the nature of exploitation to which Freire refers is left somewhat ambiguous, the latter part of the first statement, as well as the second statement, seems more instructive. That is, we can consider individuals to be “oppressed” when their “pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person” is hindered or when they are prevented “from being more fully human.” Here we get our first insight into Freire’s theoretical debt to Hegel, Marx, and critical psychoanalytic thinkers of the mid-twentieth century such as Marcuse and Fromm. More specifically, Freire develops his theory of the subject (and from it, his theories of the relationship between oppressed/ oppressor, oppression/liberation, determinism/autonomy) based on an oppositional relationship between subject and object. Freire (1970/1993) makes the nature of this relationship clear in the following passage: The conflict lies in the choice between being wholly themselves or being divided; between ejecting the oppressor within or not ejecting them; between human solidarity or alienation; between following prescriptions or having choices; between being spectators or actors; between acting or having the illusion of acting through the action of the oppressors; between speaking out or being silent, castrated in their power to create and re-create, in their power to transform the world. (p. 48) The shaping of one’s consciousness, according to Freire, is largely determined by the social milieu and nature of relationships into which one is born. In other words, the oppressed are born into a pre-existing system of meanings and social relations through which their being is defined as static and passive, a thing to be acted upon; in short, an object. Being defined thus, the oppressed come to identify with this classification. Despite this, Freire appears to attribute to human beings an inherent desire to be whole, without alienation, fully human, or self-actualized. According to Freire, when this need is frustrated by a situation of unjust social relations and unequal power over the circumstances and conditions of one’s own life, the tendency is to identify with those who seemingly possess this power to dictate the course of their own lives and that of others. This identification with an image of wholeness outside oneself in the form of the oppressor further frustrates the movement toward autonomy and self-determination. Freire (1970/1993) states, “The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this 452 KEVIN J. HOLOHAN image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility” (p. 47). Simultaneously desiring and fearing freedom, the oppressed seem to be caught in a double bind. They desire wholeness in the innermost core of their being, yet are unable to recognize this wholeness beyond the image of it reflected back to them by the oppressor. How, then, does Freire conceptualize the possibilities for the oppressed to move from a position of dependence to autonomy, from a state of internal division to wholeness, from their status as objects to embodied subjects in and with the world? From Subjectivity to Freedom and Completion Freire (1970/1993) defines “freedom” as “the indispensable condition for the question of human completion” (p. 47). It is the thwarted movement toward completion or full humanization that defines the status of the oppressed. When individuals’ capacity to act on their own behalf and shape their own reality is frustrated, this causes a feeling of impotence as well as a rejection of this impotence. According to Freire (1970/1993), this rejection of impotence often manifests itself in an identification with a person or group that has power. The oppressed, Freire claims, are reduced by their situation to the status of mere things (p. 68); this is central to Freire’s notion of dehumanization. Thus, the process of becoming more fully human seems to lie precisely in transforming one’s status as a thing. Freire’s notion is that human subjects are fully capable of consciously transforming not only their position in the symbolic and material universe, but also of transforming this universe itself. What does this possibility for transformation hinge upon? It hinges on the perception of one’s self as a narrating subject – on the capacity to reformulate the narrative that structures one’s existence and, in doing so, reclaim the ability to position one’s self in relation to the external world and other human beings. However, occupying the space of subject, whereby one can actively engage in re-authoring the narrative of one’s existence and the world, is not the end goal of critical pedagogy. The aim is to change social and material relations. According to Freire (1970/1993), “To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. Once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namers as a problem and requires of them a new naming” (p. 88). It is through naming the world and thus changing it, that, according to Freire, the subject emerges. Having considered this necessary shift in perception by which individuals begin to recognize their potential for resignifying their subject-position and capacity for changing the world, we can appreciate the centrality Freire ascribes to the student–teacher relationship in facilitating this shift. If we assume that the naming of the world is the act through which people constantly recreate that world, then, according to Freire (1970/1993), “dialogue imposes itself as the way by which they achieve significance as human beings. Dialogue is thus an existential necessity” (p. 88). Genuine dialogue with (not for or about) others is not just the means but, in important ways, also the end in the pursuit of liberation insofar as the oppressed are no longer viewed nor view themselves as things. In Freire’s theories, this dialogue with others is sharply contrasted with traditional banking models of education. According to Freire, the traditional teacher–student relationship is emblematic of the oppressor–oppressed relationship and the process of dehumanization: teachers are active and creative, students are acted upon and created; teachers manage and students are managed; teachers discipline and students are disciplined. In short, teachers possess READING FREIRE THROUGH LACAN 453 and students are possessed, teachers are agents, and students are merely things. As Freire explains: A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamentally narrative character. This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students). The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified. (p. 71, italics in original) Much like the desire to emulate and identify with the oppressor, the oppressed will often defer to those in positions of authority who they perceive as being more knowledgeable. In his efforts to engage individuals in genuine dialogue, Freire (1970/1993) notes their initial resistance to do so: “They call themselves ignorant and say the ‘professor’ is the one who has knowledge and to whom they should listen” (p. 63). Even those working in the name of liberation (from oppressive material conditions and from cultural domination that prevents people from fully participating in the social and political realm) often utilize the banking model of education in an effort to give the people “what they need,” be it knowledge or methods of analysis, to overcome or transform themselves and/or the conditions in which they find themselves. Freire (1970/1993) labels this approach to liberation as either “misguided or mistrusting of people” (pp. 78–79). He goes on to define liberation as a praxis: “the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it” (p. 79). In addition, Freire contends that those truly committed to liberation: must abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems of human beings in their relations with the world. “Problem-posing” education, responding to the essence of consciousness — intentionality —rejects communiqu es and embodies communication. It epitomizes the special characteristic of consciousness: being conscious of, not only as intent on objects but as turned in upon itself… consciousness as consciousness of consciousness. (p. 79, italics in original) Freire’s privileging of conscious intentionality (i.e. “the essence of consciousness”) suggests that before entering into dialogic relationship with pedagogues, subjects are comparatively unconscious or that their consciousness is submerged and confined by the reified socio-symbolic universe into which they are thrown. Following from this, banking education attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness, problem-posing strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality. Psychoanalytic theory deals with the fantasy–reality or submerged–raised consciousness dialectic in a very different way. Rather than viewing this position as something one can emerge from or intentionally transcend, the psychoanalytic perspective posits the unconscious as constituting the subject. Instead of viewing these two poles as a dichotomy, Lacan explains fantasy as structuring reality and it is only through “traversing the fantasy” that an individual can come to reinscribe that reality. There are very different pedagogical and curricular implications of this view compared to Freire’s conceptualization of consciousness and subjectivity. Within psychoanalysis, reality is not something that exists outside of or apart from fantasy that one can come closer to by eliminating the fantasy. Because reality is structured by the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, we can move toward telling ourselves a different story, a different narrative, and refantasize reality, thereby changing it. 454 KEVIN J. HOLOHAN Lacan: The Role of the Imaginary and Language Jacques Lacan was a twentieth-century French psychoanalyst whose work was focused upon a close re-reading and re-articulation of Sigmund Freud’s theory of the emergence and constitution of the human subject. Lacan attempts to reorient our understanding of human experience through a critique of the Cartesian notion of a substantial self who understands. Lacan’s corpus extends over several decades and is captured in both his own written works and the transcriptions of over 25 seminars he presented over the course of his life. That said, it is difficult to capture and explicate Lacan’s theory of the subject from any one particular work. This section provides a brief overview of Lacan’s theory of subject formation and constitution, but will then focus upon Lacan’s conception of the role of the Imaginary in the initial emergence of the ego and in the formation of unconscious desire around which all subsequent motivations and behaviour revolve. According to Lacan (2004), three interrelated levels constitute reality for human beings: the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. Upon our birth, we exist in the realm of the Real, which can be explained as the state in which all things, including ourselves, simply are. In the Real, individuals are unable to distinguish between themselves and the people and things that lie outside – i.e. unable to differentiate where they end and where everything else begins. Individuals first exist in an undifferentiated union with the mother who provides their basic necessities and needs. As John Storey (2006) explains: the Real is like Nature before symbolization (i.e. before cultural classification). It is both outside in what we might call ‘objective reality’ and inside in what Freud might call instinctual drives. The Real is everything before it became mediated by the Symbolic. (p. 79, my italics) We enter the Real when we are born and experience this state as whole and complete, a blissful union between self and other, outside and inside. In the realm of the Real, the subject cannot be said to exist. Two other psychological and epistemological states in Lacan’s triad – the Imaginary and the Symbolic – serve to disrupt or slice a hole in the Real, and thus introduce a gap or lack in the individual. When we, as individuals, develop a separate sense of selfhood or ego, this gap between self and other – or lack of fusion and loss of the Real – is what actually constitutes the subject within Lacanian theory. The Real is barred off from the Symbolic or, more appropriately, it is sliced into pieces by language (Lacan, 1957/2004). But this is not to suggest that there is a “more real” reality lying behind our perception of the world and ourselves that language makes possible. Rather, “the symbolic creates ‘reality,’ reality as that which is named by language and can thus be thought and talked about” (Fink, 1995, p. 25). In this sense, reality can be said to be socially constructed; language brings into existence all that did not exist prior to the language that is used to designate and discuss it. It is important to note that we should not conceive of the Real–Imaginary–Symbolic triad as representing three successive stages of subject emergence and ego development. In other words, despite our separation from the Real, which occurs through the inevitable misrecognition when we see ourselves in a mirror as an external image and immersed in the Symbolic realm of language, the Real remains (Fink, 1995). It occasionally erupts, only to be thought about through language, symbolized, and thus negated. Even before infants are able to speak or fully comprehend the language of others, their initial alienation from the Real, according to Lacan, comes with the mirror stage. READING FREIRE THROUGH LACAN 455 The Emergence of the “I” Via the Image Within the Mirror Stage In The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience, Lacan (1949/2004) attempts to explain the role of the mirror stage in the formation of the “I.” Lacan points out that children as young as six months old are capable of recognizing their own image in a mirror. Upon recognizing this image, children begin to see a connection between the movements and gestures in the mirror and those in their own environment. This recognition seems to be the precursor or primordial form of the “I” that later develops through language. According to Lacan (1949/2004): The mirror-stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation — and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic — and, lastly, to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject’s entire mental development. (p. 6) All of this suggests that before we, as infants, are capable of speaking to represent ourselves and the reality we encounter, our sense of self as a separate being occurs through desiring/appropriating outside images. However, recognizing ourselves in images that lie outside of ourselves, whether those reflected in a mirror or in the form of primary caregivers, introduces a fundamental alienation from the Real. In short, our identification with external images that comes to represent what we commonly think of as “I” represents for Lacan the ego. But, according to Lacan, the conscious ego is not the seat of subjectivity. This coherent, knowable “I,” so appealing to the uncoordinated and wholly dependent infant, is a false sense of self – a self-image that we continue to cling to throughout our lives and continually struggle to reconcile with what we see and hear around us. Lacan believes that we are born into the Symbolic in that language precedes us. But we are not equipped to represent ourselves or our needs through language at our birth. As Lacan (1949/2004) explains, “the human child, at an age when he is for a short while, but for a while nevertheless, outdone by the chimpanzee in instrumental intelligence, can already recognize his own image as such in a mirror” (p. 3). He goes on to argue that, although not able to walk or even stand, children take in a view of their image reflected in the mirror and forever fix it in their mind. Lacan categorizes this activity as an identification whereby infants assume their separate existence in the form of the image, or imago, lying outside of themselves. Out of this (mis)identification with the image comes the sense of self we are consciously aware of and what we take to be the seat of our perceptions, thoughts, volition, and behaviour. Thus, Lacan describes alienation or veiled consciousness as an inevitable process – a view very different from that of critical theorists (Lacan, 1981). Therefore, at one and the same time, the mirror-stage facilitates the emergences of the ideal-ego or who we believe ourselves to be, as well as the emergence of the subject as the subject of lack. Chiesa (2007) explains this quite succinctly: This self or ego is thus … a construct, a mental object, and though Freud granted it the status of an agency, in Lacan’s version of psychoanalysis the ego is clearly not an active agent, the agent of interest being the unconscious. (p. 37) The images to which we attach need not be confined to the literal images reflected back in an actual mirror. These images are also reflected back to us via other seemingly 456 KEVIN J. HOLOHAN whole and complete individuals and by the parental Other in the language they use to describe us as well as their body language, gestures, and overall affect. Both the images of our bodies reflected back to us in the mirror and the images of our seemingly more capable, coordinated, and powerful caregivers exert a profound influence on how we view ourselves and our place in the world. As the mirror-stage gives rise to a sense of separate selfhood in infants and thus establishes the ego, it simultaneously rips infants from the unsymbolizable and undifferentiated Real. This introduces lack and desire, which represent the emergence of the subject and ego in Lacan’s theory, though these two are not synonymous. The recognition of and identification with a stable, coherent image of oneself as reflected in a mirror or by the image of the Other ordains the birth of the ego, but not necessarily the subject as such. In 1953, Lacan established a distinction between the subject and the ego, which remained one of the most fundamental distinctions throughout the rest of his work. While the ego is part of the Imaginary order, the subject is part of the Symbolic. Thus, the subject is not equivalent to a conscious sense of agency – a mere illusion produced by the ego – but to the unconscious; Lacan’s “subject” is the subject of the unconscious. The symbolic order represents the realm in which signifiers are created, circulated, and then internalized. These signifiers are linked together in the unconscious, but there is nothing solid to which they ultimately refer. That is, they are signifiers without signifieds (Lacan, 1993). Because of the lack of a stable, consistent referent, the chain of signifiers constantly slides and shifts. Because the signifier has no direct or stable connection to the signified, the link between them, ordinarily considered to constitute meaning (or understanding of oneself and the world around oneself), is an effect of the signifier itself and its relation to other signifiers in the signifying chain. Following from this, subjects are constructed by language, alienated in language, and offered the possibility of shifting their position and the Symbolic order itself through language. As the coherent image offers the promise of a return to a state of unity and completeness, the Imaginary phase is not one that ends in infancy but rather is re-enacted throughout life. The image, simultaneously giving rise to our separate sense of selfhood and ego while also holding out the possibility of completeness, creates an inner tension we are constantly attempting to relieve. Thus, according to Chiesa (2007), the ego is: a (false) unity consisting of an extensive macro-image in which various (ideal) images are overlaid and amalgamated, and which the child comes to confuse with (what turns into) “himself”; this self/ego has thus to be considered as a passive, mental object. The image that institutes the subject as an ego is the same image that separates the subject from himself. (pp. 16–17) Considering this, subjects can never return to a time when thought and being coincide. In other words, upon our entry into language, we are split between thought and being, and it is this split that signals the emergence of the subject. Turning Descartes’ cogito inside out, Lacan (1957/2004) states, “I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think” (p. 189). Insofar as thought is structured by language and language signals a tear in the Real and introduces an existential alienation, we are forced to choose either being or thought, but can never have both at the same time. As Fink (1995) explains: Such a one-dimensional self believes that it is the author of its own ideas and thus has no qualms about affirming ‘I think.’ This Cartesian subject is characterized by what Lacan calls READING FREIRE THROUGH LACAN 457 ‘false being’ (Seminar XV), and this false being manifests itself every time an analysand says, ‘I’m the kind of person who’s independent and free-thinking’… Lacan turns Descartes on his head: ego thinking is mere conscious rationalization (the ego’s attempt to legitimate blunders and unintentional utterances by fabricating after-the-fact explanations which agree with the ideal self-image), and the being thus engendered can only be categorized as false or fake. (pp. 43–44) In this precise sense, speech is both (a) completely incapable of representing individuals as subjects (i.e. never able to fully or completely capture and convey subjectivity), and (b) always conveying more about individuals through blunders, slips of the tongue, etc. than they intend. The lack that exists at the core of individuals due to their separation from the Real is not something of which they can become conscious and, therefore, overcome or fill in. According to Lacan, this lack is unconscious and the subject is precisely this lack. It is around this lack that our (also unconscious) desires revolve. Finally, regarding desire, Lacan states, “desire is the desire of the other.” This phrase should be understood on three different levels. First, the subject desires what the Other (one’s primary caregivers, initially) desires, that which seems to make the Other full or complete. Second, the subject desires that the Other recognizes and desires it. Third, because the Other is also a desiring and incomplete or lacking subject, it can never fulfil the desire of the subject and so attempts to fill the Other’s lack with him/herself. This relationship to the Other, desire as desire of the Other, continues on throughout life, repeatedly projected onto others with whom we form close relationships. According to Appel (1996), “Lacan said that when one desires not a specific thing (food) but the desire of another, one has become human” (p. 124). Reading Freire Through Lacan and Reinvigorating Critical Pedagogy It is possible to identify both overlaps and distinctions between Paulo Freire’s and Jacques Lacan’s theories of the subject and subjectivity, the division or alienation of the subject, and the possibilities for overcoming or transforming these repressions and oppressions. In this final section, I explore the intersections and impasses between Freire’s notion of the identification of the oppressed with the oppressor and Lacan’s formulation of the Imaginary realm in the constitution of the subject. More specifically, if the critical pedagogical project is to account for the self/social dialectic and the subjective dimensions of domination and liberation, it is necessary to examine and deconstruct three interrelated fields constitutive of subjectivity: the symbolic, the imaginary, and the not-yet-imagined. While Freire focuses attention on the Symbolic, Lacan provides us with new ways to think about the relationship between the symbolic and the imaginary as well as avenues for realizing the not-yet-imagined. Freire (1970/1993) posits that “both humanization and dehumanization are possibilities for a person as an uncompleted [emphasis added] being conscious of their incompletion” (p. 43). This notion of the fundamental incompleteness of the human subject aligns with Lacan’s conception of subjectivity, forever separated from the Real upon their entrance into the linguistic/Symbolic order. However, for Freire, the incompleteness is only a temporal artefact and something to be overcome. Additionally, these two conceptions differ in the level of conscious awareness of this fundamental incompletion or lack. For Freire, this sense of incompletion comes out of one’s positioning within pre-existing social and 458 KEVIN J. HOLOHAN material relations. Therefore, by altering one’s position (from object to subject), one is then enabled to change the nature of these relations. For Lacan, this unconscious lack endures within and is constitutive of the subject. In Freire’s theories, as the consciousness of the subject emerges in response to a preestablished and unjust social or relational situation, consciousness is shaped by that reality and begins to accept it as given and natural. If someone is born into the position of an “oppressor,” the tendency is to transform everything outside of oneself, including other people, into objects of domination. On the other hand, if someone is born into the position of the “oppressed,” the tendency is not toward liberation from this situation, but rather, toward aspiring to the position of “oppressor.” As Freire (1970/1993) explains: The very structure of their [the oppressed] thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men (sic); but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity. (p. 45) In this passage, we hear echoes of the mirror-stage. However, the two articulations differ in significant ways and Lacan’s conceptions can deepen our understanding of the libidinal attachments to those with whom we identify. First, Freire conceives of this fundamental incompleteness of the subject as resulting from asymmetrical power relations of which one can become fully conscious, whereas Lacan posits that this split and the anxiety it provokes are inherent to the organism, shape its unconscious, and are a necessary aspect of the emergence of the ego. Second, Freire suggests that this incompleteness can and should be overcome through rational and authentic dialogue. Lack and the desire it creates, for Lacan, endure and persist throughout life and can only potentially be articulated and reconfigured in the psychoanalytic encounter. In both Freire’s and Lacan’s conceptualizations, subjects are incomplete, lacking, split. While for Freire this split or lack represents a dehumanizing condition, Lacan views the split or lack as constitutive of one’s humanity. However, both thinkers utilize the model of struggle laid out and described in Hegel’s (1977) dialectic of recognition between master and slave. That is, one conscious being only comes to self-consciousness through encounter with another conscious being and via an ensuing struggle with one another for recognition and to assert their will. Following Hegel (1977), both Freire and Lacan ascribe primary importance to the encounter with the “Other” in the development of selfawareness. For Freire, the incompleteness of subjects is precipitated by their positioning through a set of reified social relations, in word and action, as an object. Being born into a social order defined by the oppressor – an oppressor whose worldview defines all things based upon their utility as objects – the oppressed come to view and understand themselves through this schema. Here we begin to see the way in which Freire conceptualizes the intersection between the self and the social; the self, through the process of introjection, unconsciously begins to adopt the ideas or attitudes of others. That is, in an oppressive society or set of relations, the oppressed come to view themselves as they are viewed (as objects) and aspire toward that which they think their oppressors represent (whole or complete human beings). The important point is that, according to Freire, the oppressed are initially not aware of their position in the Symbolic order nor are they aware of their ability to alter it. In this sense, they lack consciousness of their reality until it is brought to light through dialogue. Although this suggests something of the unconscious, it is more often interpreted as an understanding conditioned by READING FREIRE THROUGH LACAN 459 reified social relations. Freire, in many ways, implies that the oppressor structures the unconscious of the oppressed. From a very different perspective, Lacan asserts that what we come to think of as the “I” “arises as a crystallization or sedimentation of ideal images, tantamount to a fixed, reified object with which a child learns to identify with him or herself” (Chiesa, 2007, p. 67). This occurs naturally and inevitably. Unlike Freire, Lacan posits that the root of human subjects’ alienation is found in identifying with an image that lies outside of themselves (and is, therefore, fundamentally insufficient for representing who we are), but that also offers fragmented human subjects the possibility of completeness. We cannot help but become emotionally invested in these images because – whether or not they serve our material interests – they hold out the impossible promise of wholeness. It is a promise that can never be fulfilled. In spite of these differences, the relationship between Lacanian subjects and the imagos with which they identify – and through which they are alienated – can be mapped onto the relationship between oppressed and oppressor, haves and have-nots. For example, when faced with great hardship (e.g. poverty, lack of success or power in society’s dominant institutions, confrontations with violence and death), it seems natural to look around and begin to internalize the images of those who have seemingly escaped these hardships, who seem “more capable, coordinated, and powerful,” more whole. Unfortunately, these identifications are not, according to Freire and Lacan, under our immediate control. They are largely structured by the historically contingent Symbolic order and the social institutions, such as schools, mass media, and political systems, into which we are born. The subject-positions on display, so to speak, with which we can identify are largely structured by dominant discourses and offered up by the aforementioned social institutions. However, because dominant discourses themselves are structured by language, they are susceptible to reinscription by active subjects. In their conceptions of human subjectivity, alienation, and the possibility for a more authentic existence, both Freire and Lacan ascribe to language a central, though distinctive, function. According to Freire (1970/1993): The language of the educator or the politician … like the language of the people, cannot exist without thought; and neither language nor thought can exist without a structure to which they refer. In order to communicate effectively educator and politician must understand the structural conditions in which the thought and language of the people are dialectically framed. (p. 97) In this conception, thought and language are dialectically framed by structural conditions. Based upon this, the origin of social institutions, ideas, and concepts is human beings. From a psychoanalytic perspective, things are not so simple. According to Lacan, social institutions, ideas, concepts, and language itself (i.e. the Symbolic order) also precede individual human subjects. They are born into a pre-existing set of signifiers that offer the most immediate forms of identification. This is the case not only in the sense of the Symbolic order but also in that subjects (i.e. the unconscious) are, to some degree, structured by the sets of signifiers ascribed to them by those around them – signifiers that structure subjects’ sense of themselves, a sense that is not their own. In other words, the independent agency of human subjects is rendered quite differently in the work of Freire and Lacan. Freire, taking up an existential humanist perspective, 460 KEVIN J. HOLOHAN grants individuals the ability to freely choose to challenge or accede to the broader sociosymbolic coordinates that function to initially define them. Lacan, on the other hand, seems to suggest that it is only through the psychoanalytic process that new sets of signifiers for human subjects can be forged (Fink, 1995). Furthermore, the psychoanalytic process entails not simply a recognition of uses of power and forms of oppression, but also an exploration of what is desired and why. Freire (1970/1993) explains that individuals, confronted by a universe of contradictory themes, or what we might call the various articulations of the Symbolic space, tend to “take equally contradictory positions: some work to maintain the structures, others to change them” (p. 101). Narratives of oppression are not seen as inaccurate or oppressive within psychoanalytic theory; instead, they are understood as fulfilling often complex desires, warding off fears, and blunting the loss of the Real. This points toward the tendency for structures, ideas, and concepts to become reified, seemingly unchanging and natural. However, in moving toward the recognition that the images and signifiers to which we attach are incapable of fulfilling our fundamental desire for wholeness and recognition from the Other, something new may emerge. For example, the United States is often heralded as the beacon of freedom, democracy, and equal opportunity – a historically contingent set of themes. However, individuals’ very real experiences of joblessness, poverty, police brutality, sexism, racism, marginalization, and exclusion from the political process are another set of dialectically contradictory themes. These contradictory themes are generally reconciled through a particular narrativization. For example, the reasons for joblessness and poverty can be ascribed to immigrants, lazy minorities, failing schools, bad teachers, or a few corrupt bankers, but the system in which these things occur is not fundamentally questioned and, therefore, remains intact. According to  zek (1989), the immigrant, the minority, the Jew, and the schools become the fetish – the Zi stand-in – that renders bearable the overall trauma resulting from an unjust system. What ends up being vitally important are the subject-positions, or identifications, available for subjects to occupy in relation to this universe of contradictory themes. This observation relies on Lacan’s psychoanalytic technique to the extent that it is the fantasies structured by language or signifiers that create fetishized concepts and objects and that provide a more robust focus of investigation in a critical educational endeavour. How these narrative fantasies structure our reality, and the ways our desires and identity might change in the reinscription of these fantasies, is the purpose of the psychoanalytic process and could be the focus of an affective critical pedagogy. By attempting to unearth and radically question the images with which we identify, as well as the broader socio-symbolic order that constructs and confines the limits of these images, critical educators can begin to make a space for envisioning the not-yet-imagined as it relates both to individual identification and the social coordinates of what is possible. For Lacan, this would necessarily involve “traversing the fantasy” and the de-subjectification it provokes (Cho & Lewis, 2005). According to Lacan, traversing the fantasy does not simply involve “recognizing myself in a symbolic network or narrative for which I am fully responsible, but rather that I fully assume the uttermost contingency of my being. The subject becomes ‘cause of itself’ in the sense of no longer looking for a guarantee of his or her existence in another’s desire” (Zizek, 1996, p. 161). This process is precipitated when analysts “shake up” the Symbolic coordinates that structure their analysands’ fundamental, alienating fantasies to the point where the analysands are compelled to occupy these fantasies. While Freire wants READING FREIRE THROUGH LACAN 461 students to be able to see that their former view did not serve their political and emotional interests, the analyst wants them to see the opposite – how it did serve their emotional interests and desires. However, the most significant way in which Lacan differs from Freire is in his repudiation of the necessity of raising “critical consciousness.” Because our relation to ourselves and others is predicated upon the Imaginary nature of the ego, “reality” itself is always a fantasy construction accorded different meaning by each of us as individuals. As a result, and unlike Freire, Lacan expresses no interest in changing material conditions. In short, Lacan offers a framework for engaging a radical interrogation of both the symbolic and the libidinally-invested realm of the Imaginary. This framework offers not only the possibility of reconfiguring the symbolic order and occupying new subject positions but also of opening up possibilities previously unthinkable, the not-yet-imagined, within the pre-existing socio-symbolic universe. The risks are great but the potentialities for transformation outweigh these risks. As Cho and Lewis (2005) explain: To risk the production of new selves is to risk the threat of losing self-recognition and, perhaps more terrifying, social recognition…the only resistance to the forms of power – to which our very subject existence depends – that has an emancipatory prospect cannot maneuver within the very circuitry of power; rather, it must be a radical short-circuit of the power network and a rerouting of the very field of reality, a gesture which requires the sacrifice of our subject identities. (p. 322) Conclusion Jacques Lacan and Paulo Freire, through their lives and work, undertook radically different projects. Psychoanalysis is primarily concerned with curing individual psychic illness and pathology resulting from trauma and repressed knowledge whereas critical pedagogy’s aim is to promote the agency of oppressed groups in transforming unequal social and material conditions. In his observation that the subject and object are collapsed, that master and slave are housed within the same psyche, Lacan’s work can provide a more complex and nuanced account of the emergence and potential transformation of subjectivity. A Lacanian analysis also highlights that both oppressing and being oppressed fulfil desires; they occur in the inevitable emptiness of the shadow of the Real. Like the oppressed, the oppressor’s own subjectivity is shaped by the desire of the (oppressed) Other and must be accounted for if a shift in either is to occur. Although structured by the desire of the Other and the Other of language, Lacanian subjects are capable of occupying the place of this Other around which their desire revolves and of articulating a new set of signifiers. What Lacan and Freire both stress is the intersubjective nature of oppression/subordination. In drawing their attention to the role of identification and language/signifiers in the formation and development of the subject, we get a sense of both the interpersonal and intrapersonal dynamics of interpellation. Lacan highlights the micro-processes behind our formation and fundamental alienation while acknowledging that our understanding of ourselves is predicated on the Symbolic coordinates mapped by our earliest relationships with caregivers. Freire, on the other hand, focuses his attention on a pre-existing social order and offers a structural critique dependent upon the binary opposition 462 KEVIN J. HOLOHAN between oppressor/oppressed. Exploitation, objectification, and inequality within/ between groups play a formative role in the consciousness of subjects. Yet, he gives scant attention to the intrapersonal, unconscious dynamics involved in the development and emergence of individual subjectivity. Both are needed. These are not contradictory projects. In bringing these theorists into conversation with one another, we can gain a better sense of the mechanisms by which we, as subjects, are “overdetermined” – with our sense or perception of ourselves being caused by multiple factors. In recognizing and acknowledging the complexity of these conceptions of subjectivity, their hold over us can be loosened. This suggests an enterprise that is simultaneously political, personal, psychological, and pedagogical. Considering Lacanian notions of the emergence and constitution of subjects, those invested in transformative pedagogy are forced to consider what signifiers they use, what students hear and internalize, and to what identifications and imagos students have access and are exposed. Transformation will always be a radically individual act and is predicated upon the simultaneously terrifying and liberating recognition of the fundamental contingency of the symbolic order and one’s subjectivity. As educators, in altering or broadening the language used to describe students and/or in offering different images, narratives, and emotions with which students may identify, we can open space for constructing radically different ontological positions. Students may then see and feel the possibility for transforming themselves and the concrete, material situations and relationships in which they find themselves. Acknowledgments The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Beyond Words, Inc., in the editing and preparation of this manuscript. The author maintained control over the direction and content of this article during its development. Although Beyond Words, Inc. supplied professional editing services, this does not indicate its endorsement of, agreement with, or responsibility for the content of the article. Disclosure statement The author has no funding or conflicts of interest to declare. Notes on contributor Kevin J. 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