The Magical Quality of Aesthetics: Art Education’s Objet a (and the New Math)

Abstract

Why is aesthetics, Duncum (2007a) argued, one of most cherished ideas in art education? Why have so many art educators employed discourse of with faith in its supreme value (Carter, 2008; Eisner, 2006)? Why have some art teachers conferred upon their students discourse of with a type of effectiveness (Tavin, 2007)? Why is there so much anxiety around possible loss or striking through of aesthetics in art education (Kamhi, 2007; Lankford, 2007)?1 And, why have some scholars (Duncum, 2008), with long lists in hand, gone to great lengths to argue that there is no concept of import to field of art education than aesthetics? Of course, precise answers to these questions are in end impossible to know. It is this impossible, unknowable dimension, however, that may provide a partial understanding of elevated status of in art education and attendant anxieties caused by mere mention of its loss. Lacanian psychoanalytic theory may help us understand how there is something in aesthetics in art education, which is than itself, and how this magical surplus supports a fantasy that in turn supports desire, and in turn, anxiety. In addition, psychoanalytic theory may help to point out fundamental limits of the recourse to - that is, argument that there are multiple each of them irreducible to others (Zizek, 2006, p. 34). Duncum (2008), for example, deployed this argument, claiming that there is no fixed essence to discourse of outside of art education, and therefore, no reason why art educators can't use term in any way they wish.2 Lacan's notion of objet a may help work out how argument for multiplication (the new math) functions disavowal of fantasy frame that surrounds discourse of in art education.Lacan used term objet a to refer to object in desire, or precisely its spectral or magical effects. The objet a has been applied to an individual, nation, or culture's (jagodzinski, 2004, p. 33), or fantasies legitimated through a field such art education. For Lacan, objet a was not an actual object or particular word, per se, but status, fantasy, and surplus around object or discourse that makes it phantasmatic. jagodzinski (2004) shed light on this notion by discussing breast object in desire, but not object itself:It is not breast per se that is fantasmatic object but fantasy that surrounds objet a that comes when infant sucks at nipple (or its substitute). It is comfort and warmth of mother's body and love she extends to infant while holding it that constitutes fantasy. The brother or sister who stares at infant at mother's breast is not jealous of breast per se, but of this affective state that breast solicits - what is more in breast than breast itself. (p. 39)In this example, objet a was surplus, magical quality of breast but not real or imagined object itself. In other words, while breast was an object per se, it was only a visible lure while objet a was not visible at all. Objet a unconscious fantasy escaped possibility of signification, alluded language, and was impossible to represent.An objet a can embody surplus around a tangible object such a breast, or an intangible subject position, such American, Teacher, or Child. Objet a equally applies to concepts that link people, objects, and subjectivities together, such discourse of aesthetics. While it does not pre-exist in objects (art, for example) or in person (art educator, for example), it does enable a fantasy that gives cause for desire between object and person. However, as an object in desire and not a material object, objet a is an open-ended and dynamic concept . …