Positioning Subjects: Psychoanalysis and Critical Educational Studies

by Stephen W. Appel

Overview

This book addresses an area that is theoretically undeveloped in educational studies—the constitution of the human subject. The author uses psychoanalysis to explore this gap in critical studies of education. Educational progressivism overestimates the power of rationality and represses any understanding of unconscious mental processes. What is needed is the development of a psychodynamic 'social psychology of classes.' According to the author, we need to investigate the differential relations between institutional and self-formative processes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780897894425
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/09/1996
Series:	Critical Studies in Education and Culture Series , #1064
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

STEPHEN APPEL is a lecturer in the Department of Education at the University of Auckland.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Critical Educational Studies
Freud on Society and the Self
The Psychic Economy of Subjectivity: Towards a Model
Althusser:The Trojan Horse
Ideology
Interpellation
Subjectivity
Education and Change
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

A contribution to the discipline of critical sociology of education (CSOE) which attempts to reintroduce Althusser's notion of ideology into educational studies. This involves developing Althusser's skeletal model psychoanalytically, and suggesting how this new view may prove to be useful. Although Althusser is remembered particularly for his contributions to Marxist philosophy, the author focuses on the integration of psychoanalysis that gives his theory of ideology its rich soil. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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