The Thing Never Speaks for Itself: Lacan and the Pedagogical Politics of Clarity

Abstract

In this article, Douglas Sadao Aoki argues that teaching conceived as the translation of complex materials into plain language is actually a refusal to teach. He challenges the commonsensical conviction that good teaching, like good writing, makes its meaning clear and accessible — a thing that speaks for itself. The authority of that conviction, he shows, has elevated the desire for clarity into an institutional demand. Yet, like many other commonsensical convictions and institutional demands, teaching framed by clarity is suspect in its politics and radical in its limitations. Aoki uses the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, which reveals the suspect exclusionary practices of those pedagogical politics, to show that the love of clear writing turns out to be a hatred of language, a hatred that motivates a refusal to teach. Aoki suggests that the crucial recognition that neither teaching nor language ever speaks for itself is what gives us the chance to refuse the refusal to teach.