Ordinary Unhappiness 119: Lacan, Knowledge, Fantasy feat. Nick Stock and Nick Peim
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Oct 25, 2025 In this discussion, Nick Peim, an experienced academic in education, and Nick Stock, a postdoctoral researcher, unpack the complexities of teaching through a Lacanian lens. They explore how teachers’ narratives shape their identities and how these fantasies often lead to disillusionment. The conversation dives into concepts of desire, lack, and the pleasures intertwined in educational practices. Ultimately, they advocate for a deeper theoretical understanding of teaching, revealing how knowledge itself is often elusive and inherently unstable.
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The Teacher Is A Loaded Signifier
- The signifier 'teacher' carries overdetermined fantasies shaping why people choose teaching.
- Lacanian theory shows those desires are often borrowed from broader symbolic discourses, not pure individual motives.
Primal Scenes Of Becoming A Teacher
- Trainee teachers often narrate a scripted 'primal scene' about wanting to help, which later unravels under extended reflection.
- Nick Stock found trainees retroactively reframe other desires—like wanting to be a novelist—into becoming a teacher.
Education's Promise Is Built On Lack
- Education is structured around a perpetual constitutive lack where learners and teachers seek a wholeness that never arrives.
- Lacanian lack makes the promise of education an impossible but motivating horizon.
