Psychoanalysis and Pedagogy: Or Teaching/Research/Writing as a Living Practice

Abstract

The veil of representation actually conceals nothing; there is nothing behind representation. Yet the fact that representation seems to hide, to put an arbored screen of signifiers in front of something hidden beneath, is not treated by Lacan as a simple error that the subject can undo; nor is this deceptiveness of language treated as something that undoes the subject, deconstructs its identity by menacing its boundaries. Rather, language’s opacity is taken as the very cause of the subject’s being, that is, its desire, or want-to-be. The fact that it is materially impossible to say the whole truth—that truth always backs away from language, that words always fall short of their goal—founds the subject.1