Teachers have to take into account the diversity of their students, and this requires recognition of the uniqueness of each individual. This reality seems to be even stronger for foreign language teachers who organise exchanges between students and offer them to open up to alterity through the teaching of the language-culture.

In a group interview with secondary school students, I was able to observe the extent to which cultural representations of the foreign other and the « linguistic imaginary » (Houdebine, 1997) are still very active for the students considering European languages. German, English and Spanish bear for them the traces of European socio-historical experiences (wars, migrations, etc.) transmitted through the generations in silences and stories and in the presence of these languages and cultural objects in their immediate environment (Pujol Berché & Díaz, 2018). Similarly, travelling from France to Spain is central to the discourse of students for whom the world of their border neighbour becomes an idealised elsewhere.

So, we can ask how foreign language teachers manage to involve students in this opening up to cultural diversity. Is it their didactic proposals based on European works or cultural events related to the language taught that make this easier ? Is it the intercultural work that takes into account the cultural diversity of their students with a migrant background that makes this possible? Or is it essentially the teacher's ability to welcome the alterity of each student that contributes to this opening?

Within the framework of a "research with" (Dubois & Kattar, 2017) inspired by the monographic writing devices proposed in Institutional Pedagogy (Vazquez & Oury, 1971), Spanish teachers were able to work on their ability to open a space between themselves and the individual students and to accept their powerlessness in the face of the radical alterity  within the group entity. This position implies respect for the student's desire, which can be expressed through his or her involvement or lack of desire to learn. Also, in an ambivalent movement that oscillates between "individuation" and "indifferentiation" for the group, foreign language teachers must work to "deal with" the forces of unbinding and partially "alphabetize" the active instinct (Bion, 1962) in the groups.

In one of the texts produced in this group elaboration device, one of the teachers describes her experience of the post-lockdown back-to-school in September 2021 in a text entitled "Rentrée masquée". This title introduces us to the context of Covid-19 and its consequences on the teachers' professional practice, but at the same time it leaves us with the idea of a hidden face, a covered identity, a carnival or a masked ball... Faced with the emotions that arise in class, the teacher expresses the desire to "de-clutter" the student from what "comes from outside", which could perhaps refer to a desire to remove the transference, to smooth out the exchanges and to avoid conflict beyond the desire to free up psychic space for the group that she asserts. This could correspond to a desire to make the negative disappear, but as Eugène Enriquez writes, "the negative has two faces: that of destruction, a sign of hatred for the living form, and that of the destruction of unity-identity, a sign of love for variety" (Enriquez, 1987, p. 94). This acceptance of 'variety' would thus be based on the ability to renounce fusion, to move away from identifications and to analyse transference, in order to accept the alterity of the other at the same time as one's own subjectivity.

Rooted in the clinical psychoanalytical approach (Blanchard-Laville & alt, 2005), the presentation is based on the analysis of the discourse in one of the texts and in the verbatim of the exchanges that took place within the group device presented in this "research with" around this text. In this observation of the effects of a monographic type of writing (Geffard & Dubois, 2013), the aim is to observe both the variations in the text written by the author and rewritten in the light of the feedback from the other members of the group (teachers, a regional educational inspector and researchers) and to analyse the terms or passages that were questioned by the group. The work carried out is based on the free associations and transferential movements observed during the group work and in the « deferred action » - both on the part of the group members and the researcher herself - and on the etymology or resonances between French and Spanish. The analysis also takes into account the teacher’s words collected during an individual clinical interview (Yelnik, 2005) carried out in 2020. The aim of the analysis of this three-dimensional corpus (original and rewritten text, verbatim of the group session and words of the interview) is to highlight the psychic processes at work and the clinical dimension that develops in the practice of these language teachers in their relationship with the other-student. But another dimension seems important because of the online device used for this "research with". The teacher - renamed Manaelle for the research - shared her writing in February 2022 via the screen on the Zoom platform and this created an effect of strangeness. She faces the other members of the group as if in absentia through the gaze that follows the lines of her text, her presence is made through her voice : her eyes appear to us in a vacuum but her voice interlinks us. The situation is strange, and from one strangeness to another, from faces without mouths to faces without eyes, it is the register of the "bizarre" that pervades this moment. We can note an echo effect between the strangeness of the first day of school, where wearing a mask was compulsory, and the scene of reading via the screen. The collection of data implied by the health crisis will therefore be observed in relation to what is said and put to work for the group.

The work within the group allowed the group members to elaborate their position to welcome the alterity of their students or at least to recognise it in the reaffirmation of their own subjectivity. In the exchanges about this text, the expression of emotions and the importance of the face as a place of identity (Lévinas, 1995) were central. From a relational modality that would be incest (Racamier, 1995) in some aspects, Manaelle seems to have developed an "ethic of encounter" in the sense that Jean Oury describes that "there is something of a commerce with the other, of simply recognising the other, of grasping him where he is in his uniqueness, [...] in his opacity" (Oury, 2013, p. 269). This development in Manaelle and other teachers in the group underlined the extent to which the encounter makes it possible to establish a pedagogical relationship despite the compulsory wearing of a mask that erases the mouth. Beyond the work on pronunciation and on prosody, for the foreign language teachers and their students a "need" for the other's face was expressed. Also, the attention paid to affects and emotions seems to reveal the importance of recognising alterity in what creates the link. Teachers can be attentive to a kind of personal bodily repertoire in the other-student, but their reading - like any reading - cannot be other than subjective and says as much about the reader as it does about the "read subject", and therefore interpreted. Thus, the teacher must work on "translating a body-text" (Canat, 2014) in order to think about the other-student based on his or her behaviour by assuming the part that belongs to him or her and that resonates within him or her.

Bion, W. R. (2014). The Complete Works of W. R. Bion. Volume I. London : Karnac Books. Canat, S. (2014). Face aux troubles du comportement : Une pédagogie institutionnelle adaptée. Cliopsy, 12(2), 7 18. https://doi.org/10.3917/cliop.012.0007 Dubois, A., & Kattar, A. (2017). Faire de la recherche « avec » ou de la recherche « sur » ? Une recherche sur l’exclusion ponctuelle de cours en France. Phronesis, 6(1 2), 48 59. Enriquez, E. P. (1987). Le travail de la mort dans les institutions. In Kaës, R. L’institution et les institutions : Études psychanalytiques. Dunod. Geffard, P., Dubois, A. (2013, août 1). Monographies et approche clinique d’orientation psychanalytique en sciences de l’éducation. Congrès de l’Actualité de la recherche en Éducation et Formation (AREF – AECSE), Montpellier, Montpellier. Houdebine, A.-M. (2015). De l’imaginaire linguistique à l’imaginaire culturel. La linguistique, 51(1), 3 40. https://doi.org/10.3917/ling.511.0003 Levinas, E. (1995). La proximité de l’autre. In Altérité et transcendance (p. 108 115). Fata morgana. Oury, J. (2013). La décision : Séminaire de Sainte-Anne, 1985-1986. Institutions. Pujol Berché, M., & Díaz, N. R. (2018). Estereotipos sobre España en el paisaje lingüístico de París. Amnis. Revue d’études des sociétés et cultures contemporaines Europe/Amérique. https://doi.org/10.4000/amnis.3457 Racamier, P.-C. (2010). L’inceste et l’incestuel. Dunod. Vasquez, A., Oury, F., & Dolto, F. P. (1977). Vers une pédagogie institutionnelle ? Maspero. (Texte original publié en 1967). Yelnik, C. (2005). L’entretien clinique de recherche en sciences de l’éducation. Recherche & formation, 50 (1), 133 146. https://doi.org/10.3406/refor.2005.2107