Finding the Figure of the Teacher in Comics

This introductory chapter positions this psychoanalytically informed study of teachers in comics in relation to a number of intersecting fields: curriculum and cultural studies, teacher education, and literary criticism in comics studies. The concept of the educational social unconscious, an assemblage of shared assumptions regarding (among other things) the limitations and possibilities of what it means to be a teacher, is here introduced as a way to account for the interpretive moves enacted in this book, which frames the representational form of comics as an unconventional and yet uniquely privileged site for studying the circulations of potential meaning contained, produced, and maintained by the figure of the teacher in popular culture. Particular attention is paid in this chapter to reviewing the interdisciplinary use of comics in educational research, as well as framing the status (and symbolic potential) of comics in relation to both literature and popular culture. This chapter also articulates a method of reading comics in close relation to unconscious reverie, a form of psychoanalytic communication, and emphasizes the importance of reading comics poetically, which may entail de-emphasizing the dominance of story and narrative.