The Pathology of Mathematics Education

This text was occasioned by a close reading of Lacan’s ethics (Seminar VII of 1959–1960) and reflected on what an ethical basis for mathematics education might be when envisioned from the perspective of Lacanian psychoanalysis. The psychoanalytic perspective explored here conceives of modern school/institutional mathematics (M20 as termed by Baldino & Cabral, 2018) as both a psychotic structure and The Thing in the educational environment; thus, the pedagogical situation is experienced as a pathological encounter. From the pathological view, the mathematics psychosis speaks its identity-quilted-speech: It enjoys, and it knows nothing. When we as subjects attempt to learn mathematics, it appears to us in a suffering-state, so that we may enjoy it. This dialectic constitutes a sadomasochistic contract. For Lacan, ethics is a matter of sublimation, which is the psychical act of making something seem less ideological and more socially acceptable; the more one sublimates, the more one “pays for it” by receiving more enjoyment (jouissance). It is concluded that a field of mathematics education predicated on an ethical basis of love (not philanthropy) and the social link may simultaneously envision a future for decelerating the juggernaut of the capitalist mode of school and reveal its inherent contradictory hatred of knowledge—not knowledge of mathematics, but knowledge of jouissance.