Slavoj Žižek by Tony Wall & David Perrin

Author:Tony Wall & David Perrin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

How does it operate in this way? That which escapes capture in the Symbolic does this by creating a painful discomfort through a sense of lack, or something missing, thereby propelling into a constant search for some-thing—desire—a kind of ‘wish’ for some-thing (Lacan 1981; Žižek 1989). Yet this seeking provides us with an “enjoyment” for as long as this lack is experienced (Žižek 1994, p. 330). Specifically, this creates a situation of gaining pleasure from repetitive loops of trying to fully capture (through the Symbolic) but failing (something always escapes). And a specific form of desire is when we no longer even need to capture that which escapes—drive (Žižek 2006)—where we “get caught into a closed, self propelling loop of repeating the same gesture and finding satisfaction in it” (Žižek 2006, p. 63). Within education, this often appears when we successfully work within the parameters of completing a proforma or template, or regulative frameworks (Brown 2008).

This all helps to explain how significant the Symbolic images illustrated in this book so far are within contemporary education: they provide the coordinates of not only what education is, but also how the people involved in it make sense of themselves, and therefore how they feel they should act within daily settings. These simplified versions, caught by the Symbolic, are so powerful in the way they shape what and how we see, and therefore how we engage in our educational settings, which is why Žižek goes as far as saying that “things (commodities) themselves believe in [our] place” (Žižek 1989, p. 31). Yet for Žižek, this is only part of the story that explains why it is so difficult to effect changes within contemporary education. The next chapter now picks up more of the story.

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