Alcorn makes a strong case in this chapter that “rhetoric of discourse is libinal” (26) and that “libidinal structure is always ideological. Libidinal structures are inesapably ideological because all meanings and all feelings operate as meanings in an ideological context” (25). He critiqutes James Berlin’s pedagogy (his two modes of freedom: 1) teacher offers “social and discursive freedom that is unavailable elsewhere,” and 2) the classroom as a place of debate that “provides students with knowledge that enables them to construct themselves rather than suffer the effects of others’ ideological consructions” [12]) as lacking a psychoanalytical grounding that includes libidinal structures.
Alcorn offters “a third model for change… esentially a psychanalytic model, [that] suggests that discourse or language is, in itself, a highly heterogeneous substance. On one hand, it can operate as coded information, able to influence political identity largely in terms of the old liberal categories of knowledge and truth” (20).
In order to change oneself, one has to, according to Alcorn, reduce the unconscious conflict within oneself. Alcorn notes that “ideology works best when it manages to keep such conflcited libidinal experiences fully repressed” (22). “Subjects will develop freedom and rationality only to the extent that they are encouraged to discover, recognize, and take responsibility for the unconscious libidinal codes of desire and repression that underwrite their own subjectivity. This freedom requries work that analysts call grief work…. The giving up of libidinal attachments is always a form of mourning” (23, 27).
Drawing on Freud, Alcorn notes how we are beings of attachment, and that we remain attached to things, people, and events even if they cause suffering, because removing ourselves from those attachments is also painful (26-27). Here I am reminded of counseling theories that discuss how one does not change behavior or thought until the pain surrounding the current situation becomes greater than the fear surrounding the change.
Alcorn calls for a teaching that is both political and personal: “Because ideology operates at the level of personal and emotional experience, it needs to be explored at that level” (28).
Alcorn, Marshall W., Jr. Changing the Subject in English Class: Discourse and the Construction of Desire. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2002.
I stumbled here tagging things for my del.icio.us, in critical pedagogy reading. I’m a teacher in elementary in CA , in Oxnard working in an underperforming school. I don’t like to read and not let someone know I was there…you have a rich site, dauntingly well built. I’m going to revisit to read. Wow..very impressed here at 3 A/M. i wish you had that about you thing up…
Sarah