Recodifications of academic positions and reiterations of desire: change but continuity in gendered subjectivities

This paper argues that the analysis of changes in the social position of women needs to distinguish between levels of social practice and psychic subjectification. The argument draws on Lacan's conception of the relationship between subjectivity, desire and sexual difference to describe gendered aspects of subjectivity embedded within the (re)organisation of social fields. The data is taken from a comparative case study of undergraduate modules in four universities, and the analysis identifies gendered differences in the tutors? pedagogic and disciplinary practice. These differences suggest that while the practice of the female tutors, in different ways, constituted recodifications of existing disciplinary and pedagogic practices, these instances of recodification can simultaneously be interpreted as gendered identifications with an external, feminine position in relation to the dominant structures of the Symbolic Order. Thus, while change may be instituted at the level of practice within specific social fields, at the level of subjectification the recodifications that mark such changes can be read as a reiteration of primary gendered identifications

The ethics of interpretation : The signifying chain from field to analysis

This paper attempts to describe the relationship between the embodied practice of fieldwork and the written articulation of this experience. Starting from Valerie Hey's conceptualisation of 'rapport' as form of 'intersubjective synergy', a moment of recognition of similarity within difference – similar in structure to Laclau and Moufffe's conceptualization of hegemony – the paper explores how we can understand these moments of recognition as positioned within a complex web of signifying chains that interlink social, psychic and linguistic means of representation. Laclau and Mouffe's logics of equivalence and difference and Lacan's account of the production of meaning through metaphor and metonymy provide a theoretical language through which to explore chains of meaning in two fragments of data drawn from a study comparing disciplines and institutions in higher education. My argument is that an awareness of these processes of production of meaning is necessary to the development of an ethical mode of interpretation

Recontextualising ‘play’ in early years pedagogy : Competence, performance and excess in policy and practice

This paper traces the way discourses within early years policy and practice impose meanings onto the signifier ‘play’. Drawing on Bernstein’s conceptualisation of recontextualising strategies, we explore how these meanings regulate troubling excesses in children’s ‘play’. The analysis foregrounds an underlying question about the hold the signifier ‘play’ maintains within discourses that appear antithetical to traditional understandings of ‘play’. Keywords: play, Bernstein, early years, recontextualising strategies, pedagogic discours

Interpreting 'resistance' sociologically: a reflection on the recontextualisation of psychoanalytic concepts into sociological analysis

This paper explores the contextual, methodological and theoretical implications of using psychoanalytic concepts within sociological analysis. Through the interpretation of an interaction between myself and a research participant as an instance of 'resistance', I will argue that it is possible to recontextualise psychoanalytic concepts, but that this recontextualisation involves an inevitable transformation in meaning. In addition, I will suggest that an analysis incorporating psychoanalytically derived interpretations, combined with more traditional approaches to discursive social analysis, can enhance our understanding of social phenomena

The explosion of Real Time and the structural conditions of temporality in a society of control: durations and urgencies of academic research

In the context of ongoing debates about the distinctive temporalities associated with contemporary regulative regimes, this paper explores the interpretive trajectories initiated in contrasting conceptualisations of the politics of time. This exploration is developed through analysis of interview data from a study of unconscious relations in academic practice. Section one uses one moment of data to contrast phenomenological, Deleuzian and Lacanian theorisations of the relation between time and subjectivity. Section two is an exegesis of Lacan’s paper on Logical Time. This outlines the way temporality is structured in relation to the subject’s guess about the expectations of the Other. Section three uses this to develop an interpretation of three temporalities that constitute the space of contemporary academic subjectivities. The final section considers the intensification of the juxtaposition of these incongruent temporalities, contrasting Lacanian and Deleuzian theorisations of time in the Real/virtual and their implications for both methodological and political strategy

Reflexivity and Fantasy: surprising encounters from interpretation to interruption

This article sets out two psychoanalytically informed conceptions of fantasy as a resource for reflexivity in research. First is the fantasy as a defensive structure that distorts our perception of reality, and the use of the researcher’s affective responses as an interpretive tool. Second is the fantasy as a signifying structure that constitutes the subject’s engagement in reality, foregrounding unconscious symbolic associations. These approaches are traced in the construction and analysis of interview data, exploring (a) a trajectory that interprets fantasy as a defense against difficult emotions, (b) the construction of free associations, and (c) symbolic material that disrupts the interpretation of fantasy as defense

Natal hand club: Summaries of papers

No Abstract

Antagonism and overdetermination: the production of student positions in contrasting undergraduate disciplines and institutions in the United Kingdom

Based on data drawn from an empirical research project in four UK universities, this article presents a picture of student positions in undergraduate classes as a product of the relationship between the discursive fields of discipline, institution and gender. It begins by providing a description of some contrasting features of academic disciplines, and then identifies ways in which these features conflict with features of other discursive fields, to marginalize specific students or groups of students. The article draws on the conceptual vocabulary of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe to argue that where features of discursive fields overlap, social identities are overdetermined, while where features of discursive fields conflict, social identities are placed in an antagonistic and unstable relation to social and symbolic systems

Wanted: A Maine Woods Dialogue

In his commentary on Jerry Bley’s article on the Maine Land Use Planning Commission (LURC), Mark Lapping discusses the need for serious dialogue about the future of the Maine North Woods. He believes that LURC’s mandate needs to be altered and enlarge

Sufficient Unto Themselves: Life and Economy Among the Shakers in Nineteenth-Century Rural Maine

Community self-sufficiency was an ideal that both defined and informed the Shaker experience in America. During the nineteenth century the Shakers at Sabbathday Lake Colony in New Gloucester, Maine—today the last remaining Shaker Colony in the nation— developed a sophisticated economic system that combined agricultural innovation, a far-reaching market-based trade in seeds, herbs, and medicinals, mill-based and home manufacturers, and “fancy goods” to supply the developing tourist sector. They practiced both selective cloture and a profound degree of market savvy as they confronted the maturing market economy. Mark B. Lapping is Professor of Public Policy at the Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine, in Portland. He is author of several books and many articles and is currently editing for re-publication Clarence Day\u27s classic History of Agriculture in Maine