Conference Agenda

This proposal comes from the questioning of the dual purpose of research itself in the psychoanalytically oriented clinical approach: to produce knowledge, but also potentially to change the view of reality held by the subjects who are the objects of the research. Like any research method, those used in this field – individual or group interviews or observations – have an effect on the subjects involved in the research. What, then, is the specific value of the psychoanalytical approach in education in terms of knowledge and action? I therefore propose to examine a data collection method that I use as a researcher in close connection with my practice as a teacher trainer.

Thus, I want to clarify with this short paper how the psychoanalytically clinical approach can offer both finalities at the same time. I am considering the two aspects of “acting” and “knowing” in the devices I’m using in “collaborative research” (Desgagné, 1997) inspired by the monographic writing group (Dubois, 2015). I will observe how the construction of a subject's ethics and the renunciation of omnipotence and control over students are articulated. This seems to be facilitated by the group experience and the mediation of writing. Therefore, for the researcher who leads the group of teachers in practice analysis, it is a laboratory for theorisation, and, at the same time, it opens up a space for transformation through the work on the ethical position of professionals.

I will focus on verbatim quotes taken from the sessions of the groups accompanied by the two researchers and alone, as well as on notes taken during practice analysis sessions and during supervision sessions carried out by three researchers (the two researchers involved and a colleague from outside the project I propose to examine how the control processes present in the relationship between teachers and their hierarchy can be repeated in their relationship with pupils, in a logic of “functional homology” (Pinel, 2002). The pressure exerted on teachers to perform well in the transmission of mathematical knowledge seems to be reflected in the desire to « control » pupils' mental activities through the implementation of more restrictive teaching methods. This is where the “drive for control” and “incestuousness” (Racamier, 1995) lies. In this verbatim, we can also observe how much “mirroring effects” (Foulkes, 1970) can occur, offering psychological changes for the teachers participating in the group. This brings us to the level of “action” induced by the group setting.

I would also like to analyse the importance of supervision sessions with a third researchers who is not immersed in the reality of the field, in order to allow the researchers' thinking to unfold. These free sessions, dedicated to analysing group processes, enable the researchers to take a step back and propose shared interpretative approaches.

In this presentation, I analyse how the Lacanian conceptualisation of the subject and desire can contribute to an understanding of the production of subjectivities (Guattari, 2025), which has been identified as a central component of the modes of labour control characteristic of contemporary biocapitalism. The study is grounded in the recognition that addressing the ongoing ecological crisis requires the overcoming of capitalism, since capital accumulation remains tied to its material basis (Hickel & Kallis, 2020). This, in turn, requires a systematic understanding of the mechanisms through which individuals are integrated into the capitalist system of production, that is, into the capital relation that constitutes the core of capitalism. By the capital relation, I refer, following Marx (2020), to the relation between capital and labour power. The presentation is based on my ongoing theoretical doctoral research.

Autonomist Marxist literature (Tronti, 2019; Negri, 1991) highlights labour power as both the source of surplus value and an antagonistic force that seeks to evade capital’s control. Capitalism develops through the interplay of labour’s struggles for emancipation and capital’s attempts to capture them. This has led to the current biocapitalist mode of production, in which life itself becomes the main site of surplus value extraction (Marazzi, 2015, p. 45). In biocapitalism the entirety of subjectivity serves as the primary means of production, and thus the control of labour power entails the organization of people’s cognitive capacities, emotions, desires, and social relations according to the principles of capital accumulation – the modelling of psychic space as a technique of control (Viren, 2018; Berardi, 2009). In this way, work becomes a site of libidinal investment that exploits desire.

Previous analyses have examined indirect mechanisms of the production of subjectivities, such as the conditionality of social security and the use of indebtedness (Viren, 2018). In this presentation I direct critical attention to education as a more direct means of governing labor and producing subjectivities, and thus as a possible site of resistance. As an illustrative example, I examine the concept of continuous learning, which has become an increasingly prevalent framework in educational policy documents (Kinnari, Laalo & Silvennoinen, 2022). While the analysis of education as a site of subjectivity production is by now a well-established perspective (Ball, 2019; Värri, 2018), this presentation advances the discussion by approaching these questions through a combined framework of autonomist Marxist theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis.

In order to understand the premises of this biocapitalist production of subjectivities, I turn to Jacques Lacan’s theory of the subject. In Lacan’s thought, desire is fundamentally intertwined with the structure of the subject, which renders it inherently insatiable (Värri, 2018, p. 67–70). Desire is generated by an imaginary object formed within the social dynamics of early childhood, the objet petit a, which symbolizes lack by representing that which we imagine to be missing from us and which would provide ultimate fulfillment, were it to exist (Fink, 1995, p. 59–61). The logic of desire is sustained by failure in the pursuit of fulfillment – paradoxically, it is precisely this failure that maintains the fantasy that fulfillment may still be attainable at some point in the future (Fink, 1995, p. 90–91; Stavrakakis, 1999, p. 45–49). Moreover, desire takes its orientation from the desire of the Other (Fink, 1995, p. 54; McGowan, 2016, p. 35–36; Sarup, 1992, p. 69; Usher & Edwards, 1994, p. 61), by which Lacan refers to the social determination of desire. These features of desire, as articulated by Lacan, render it particularly amenable to biocapitalist modes of labor governance and educational practices that seek to shape subjectivities.