This article draws on psychoanalytic theory to reconsider democracy, education and their relationship. The author argues for the pervasive presence of fantasmatic thinking in relation to both democracy and education in much media and policy discussion, which fuels our subjection to ideology through cruelly optimistic promises about the future benefits which will accrue from current sacrifice – promises which are exposed as false by persistent and growing economic inequality and the substantial failure to fulfil its inflated promises that is endemic to modern education. By contrast, the article argues for a politics grounded in an acceptance of constitutive lacking status as desiring subjects, which recognises and embraces the enjoyment that comes from loss, thereby freeing us from the spell of compulsive repetition reflected in our fixation on fantasmatic programmes of redemption in both politics and education. This might open possibilities for realising, albeit indirectly and obliquely, the goals which continually escape our more overt attempts to grasp them. The author’s overall argument is that the flaws and illusions characterising our experiences of democracy and education are not reasons to abandon them, but instead suggest a need to rework our relationship to them in less fantasmatic ways, ‘in spite of it all’.

中文翻译：

---

民主与教育：“尽管如此”

本文利用心理分析理论重新考虑民主，教育及其关系。作者主张在许多媒体和政策讨论中普遍存在与民主和教育相关的幻想主义思想，这通过对当前牺牲所产生的未来利益的残酷乐观的承诺，加深了我们对意识形态的服从。由于持续的和日益严重的经济不平等，以及无法兑现现代教育所特有的虚张声势的承诺，这是错误的。相比之下，该文章主张建立一种政治基础，即接受构成性的缺乏地位作为渴望的主体，承认并接受来自损失的享受，从而使我们摆脱了强迫性重复的魔咒，这反映在我们对政治和教育的幻想性救赎计划的关注上。这可能为实现目标（尽管间接地和倾斜地）提供了可能性，这些目标不断地逃脱了我们试图抓住这些目标的更为公开的尝试。作者的总体论点是，表征我们的民主和教育经历的缺陷和幻想并不是放弃它们的理由，而是表明有必要以一种不太幻想的方式（尽管如此）重新建立我们与他们之间的关系。