The revese side of learning : an essay on education, psychoanalisis and capitalism

Abstract

Based on the theories of Jacques Lacan and neo-lacanian authors, this text aims to describe and analyze how, throughout the western pedagogical tradition, genuine learning is being inhibited through the implementation of discourses of social domination. By means of bibliographical research, the work will first address the concept of subversion of the subject in Lacan and then his theory of the four discourses, evidencing that the process of genuine learning as well as psychoanalytic healing presuppose the admission of the subject´s subverted state. Next, the text discusses the presence of discursive elements described by Lacan in the works of Plato, showing how his philosophy constitutes a subject of knowledge, negating its subverted condition. The following sections describe the employment of psychoanalysis’ discoveries by the capitalist system and the consequent alteration of subjectivation processes since the second half of the twentieth century, analyzing these processes through a fifth discourse, later introduced by Lacan as the Capitalist Discourse. Finally, it is shown how the manifest repression by the master's discourse today gives way to the anonymity of a hegemony of knowledge and the self-commodification of subjects. The text concludes that the interpersonal relationship that enables genuine learning, despite systematic repression by the educational system, can be established, depending on the educator’s readiness to admit his or her subverted subject status.