The evisceration of ‘truth’: a cinematic-psychoanalytic entanglement with the notion of truth in education

ABSTRACT

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 far as s/he believes in the envisaged utopia. Analysing the Polish drama film, Ida (2013), from a psychoanalytic-Lacanian perspective, this paper aims to show how a cinematic entanglement with the notion of truth can eviscerate it from its utopian conception. In the film under analysis, the protagonist’s mere act of searching for the truth, rather than necessarily finding it, can turn out to be a more constitutive attempt. Accordingly, the paper argues that a subjective entanglement with the notion of truth is constitutive when the subject identifies with her/his ontological lack, in the Lacanian sense of the term.

KEYWORDS:

• Truth
• neoliberal education
• Ida
• psychoanalysis
• Lacan
• film
• utopia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This strange juxtaposition of ‘the only’ and ‘prime’ shows the violence inherent in neoliberalism.

2 According to Ranciere (2013), every deed can be political as far as it is able to manipulate the subject’s sense perception. In a sense, political ideologies lose their function if they cannot do the latter. From this view, politics does get involved with social, economic and cultural activities.