This paper mobilises the psychoanalytic concepts of desire and enjoyment to better understand how processes of education aimed at extending and defending democratic life might respond to and engage with populist politics. I approach this task by engaging with a particular vector of Mouffe and Laclau's political philosophy, moving from a critique…

This paper diffracts Deleuze and quantum physics through Winnicott's work to argue for an enrichment to playing. The roots of the play-cognitive hierarchy in Freudian psychoanalysis makes visible that progression and the stages that a child must pass en route to rationality continue to feed educational assumptions that a child must leave playing…

Purpose: This paper contributes to a dialogue about the psychoanalytic concept of free association and its application in the context of qualitative research interviewing. In doing so, it also adds to wider discussion regarding the relationship between clinical psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic psychotherapy and qualitative research.…

The article explores several tensions in Bernard Stiegler's philosophy of education. This article evaluates the epistemological and philosophical significance of the Prometheus myth in Stiegler's work. It also examines Stiegler's biographical reflections on how he became a philosopher, alongside his understanding of psychoanalysis (given Freud's…

This article proposes literature and psychoanalysis as forms of critical education, putting in urgent question the market-driven, instrumental models of learning that currently dominate higher education policy. In psychoanalytic terms, it argues, the primary mechanism at work in such a policy is what psychoanalysis calls splitting, which involves…

This article addresses relations between concepts of 'self', 'other(s)' and 'othering' through a reading of the revolutionary psychiatrist Frantz Fanon's psychoaffective phenomenological and pedagogical narrative approach, reading his work as phenomenological and educational as well as critiquing phenomenology, psychology, education and (of…

Deploying a Lacanian conceptual framework, this article interrogates the psychoanalytic underpinnings of Paulo Freire's dialogical method of critical pedagogy. The paper advances the claim that the transformative efficacy of Freirean dialogue is rooted in its unique ability to confront and engage the repressed element of trauma, or what Lacan…

In this paper we respond to this special issue's critical focus on mental health in education by considering the medicalised and homogenising approaches to the mental health of young people and the severely negative consequences for young people. Our argument is underpinned by the need to destabilise the hegemony of the current dominant discourses…

Turning to key texts of Paulo Freire and Jacques Lacan, this paper argues that the experience organized in critical pedagogy can be rearticulated on the basis of a structural-practical connection to psychoanalysis. I pay specific attention to the methodical parallels that develop between the accounts of the psychoanalytic and pedagogical…

In the neoliberal discourse of education, the notion of "truth," as a fantasmatic concept, has a pivotal status. In order to actualise its non-existent yet highly captivating utopia of perfection, progress and prosperity, this discourse needs to present a homogeneous picture of human ontology whose needs and desires can be satisfied as…

The use of "post-isms" has become increasingly prominent in academic discourse because it offers new perspectives for gaining insight into current developments in human society and the historical dimension of culture. In the Hong Kong educational context, the concept of "post-isms" has permeated the current music curriculum.…

In an appeal to establish transformative learning's (TL) boundaries, Kegan (2000) implored researchers to identify "what from transforms?" As a social psychologist, I am particularly drawn to theorists who identify the self as the form that transforms; however, I argue that a model of the self that specifies how it is represented in…

This paper explores the intricate interplay of racism, trauma, and identity in Toni Morrison's novel, "The Bluest Eye." It delves into the challenges faced by African Americans within a predominantly white society by utilizing current trauma theory and black feminist concepts. The theoretical framework includes cultural trauma theories,…

The historical appropriation of epistemological values is the theme of the article. Bachelard, one of the pioneering thinkers on epistemological evolution, presupposed that historical epistemology will culminate in the end of its history. Scientific imagination should be decluttered from human sentimentalities, Bachelard observed. For that, it is…

This article reviews the implications of many of the major schools in the history of psychology for understanding giftedness and its inner workings: operationist, psychometric, psychoanalytic, associationist, behaviorist, Gestalt, cognitive, humanistic/positive psychology, functionalist/pragmatic/constructivist, cultural, and biological. Each…