Lacanian Perspectives on Educational Futures in Human-AI Entanglement

Abstract

This conceptual investigation explores emergent possibilities for educational transformation through the evolving relationship between humans and generative artificial intelligence, theorised within Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic framework. Rather than viewing AI as merely a technological tool, this analysis examines how human-AI entanglements open pedagogical territories that may reconstitute educational subjectivity and learning relationships. Drawing upon four Lacanian concepts, the symbolic order, objet petit a , jouissance , and the Real, this investigation maps educational possibilities emerging from posthuman subjectification processes. The symbolic order of traditional pedagogy, maintained through institutional authority and knowledge transmission, encounters productive disruption as AI systems generate discourse destabilising boundaries between teacher, student, and machine. Generative AI emerges as a novel form of objet petit a , functioning as an object of pedagogical desire promising complete knowledge whilst opening infinite possibilities through algorithmic unknowability. Educational jouissance may manifest as excessive enjoyment of AI-mediated learning, revealing libidinal investments in technological pedagogy exceeding instrumental need. The Real resurfaces through AI’s capacity to generate content resisting conventional pedagogical integration, creating learning encounters that expose and expand meaning-making possibilities. This framework suggests human-AI educational hybridisation could catalyse emergent learning forms challenging humanist assumptions about knowledge authority and educational authenticity. In doing so, the article contributes to possibility studies by showing how Lacanian concepts help explain why some educational futures become imaginable whilst others remain foreclosed.