RU253: NICHOLAS STOCK – “Does the teacher enjoy? Thinking through educational enjoyment with Lacan”

Rendering Unconscious episode 253.

Dr. Nick Stock is an independent researcher, currently exploring Lacanian psychoanalysis as an approach to unravelling the desires of teachers. He has other interests in poststructuralist philosophy and radical political theory. He holds a doctorate in Philosophy of Education from the University of Birmingham and is also an English teacher in an inner-city Sixth Form College. He tweets @89stock 

For more of his work, see his recent publication in Pedagogy, Culture and Society ‘The Weird, Eerie, Exit Pedagogy of Mark Fisher‘ and his forthcoming publication in British Psychoanalytic Council magazine New Associations ‘My Teaching. Lacanian Reflections from the Classroom’.

Philosophical questions about teachers often ask what teachers are for, or less interestingly, how they can improve. But amidst teacher recruitment shortfall, waves of teacher strikes, a disillusioned workforce, and a rising sense of educational authoritarianism, we might wonder whether the teacher can enjoy “being” a teacher. Did they ever, and what sorts of enjoyment are to be found? Drawing on Lacanian theory, this talk will explore the structure of education
that teachers find themselves amidst, consider the teacher as a subject in this structure, and pose questions concerning educational enjoyment, or jouissance.

Talk given at UCL for PESGB on 07/06/23

You can support Rendering Unconscious podcast at our Patreon, where we post exclusive content every week: www.patreon.com/vanessa23carl

Or you can join us at Substack where we also post weekly content: https://vanessa23carl.substack.com

Rendering Unconscious Podcast is hosted by Dr. Vanessa Sinclair, a psychoanalyst based in Sweden, who works with people internationally. 

Follow Dr. Sinclair on social media:  Twitter | Instagram | TikTok

Dr. Sinclair is the author of The Pathways of the Heart (Trapart Books, 2021), Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art: The Cut in Creation (Routledge, 2021) and Switching Mirrors (Trapart Books, 2016).

And is the editor of  Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Films of Ingmar Bergman: From Freud to Lacan and Beyond (Routledge, 2023), Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics & Poetry (Trapart Books, 2019), Outsider Inpatient: Reflections on Art as Therapy (Trapart Books, 2021) with Dr. Elisabeth Punzi, On Psychoanalysis and Violence: Contemporary Lacanian Perspectives (Routledge, 2019) co-edited with Dr. Manya Steinkoler, and The Fenris Wolf, vol 9 (Trapart Books, 2017) and The Fenris Wolf vol 11 (Trapart Books, 2022) co-edited with Carl Abrahamsson.

Many thanks to Carl Abrahamsson, who created the intro and outro music for Rendering Unconscious podcast. All music at Swedish independent record label Highbrow Lowlife Bandcamp page is free download/ name your price. Enjoy!

The song at the end of the episode is “The subject’s inner experience” from the album “Indulgence not abstinence” by Vanessa Sinclair and Pete Murphy. Available at Bandcamp. Also available at Spotify and other streaming services.

Image: Lacan teaching