Introduction

The direction of recent education policy is typically described by commentators as neo-liberal which raises the thorny question of what we mean by neo-liberalism. Education is deeply entangled with the operation of deeply held and powerfully persuasive fantasies that seek to suture the word of education policy and the world of educational practice, bringing both into line with particular ideological imaginaries. These fantasies reflect deeper commitments to the linearity of time, the redemptive character of education and the instrumental nature of policy. Perhaps most obviously, Lacanian psychoanalysis sees the human subject as irredeemably divided, split along multiple lines of fracture: between conscious and unconscious thought; between the enunciating and the enunciated person; and between the three – imaginary, symbolic and Real – registers of the psyche. Fantasy is a concept with clear political purchase; but its mobilization in social and political analysis is relatively recent.