The argument presented here is, in some respects, an act of atonement for mistakes made in an earlier paper. Amongst other things, I gave an account of what I saw as the significance for education of Barthes’s treatment of the “concepts” studium and punctum which feature in Camera Lucida (2000). The studium, says Barthes, is what within the photograph provokes: a “general interest” (Barthes, 2000, p.25). It has: “an average effect born of a certain training” (26). The studium encompasses the features of the photograph that Barthes calls the “raw details of ethnological knowledge” (p. 24), which allow for a sociological/historical engagement with it. Barthes explicitly associates the studium with education and in turn sees education as synonymous with: “knowledge and civility, politeness” (27). In contrast, the punctumrefers to the affect brought about by the spectral details in the photographs, details that are different from ethnological knowledge as the punctum permits no analysis: “I receive it right here in the eyes” (42).Whereas the studium has a socialising “function”, the punctum is dysfunctional and concerns itself in a radical way with subjectivity. Not every photograph has a punctum, and not every person experiences the same punctum in the same photograph. For Barthes, the photographs we “love” as opposed to like “transform us into primitives, children or maniacs (51). Unlike details of the studium, the detail which issues the punctum is not intentionally included by the photographer: “certain details may “prick” me. If they do not, it is doubtless because the photographer has put them there intentionally.” (47). It would appear that for Barthes the punctum has no “educational” function. Aside from the association of education with the studium, the only other reference to education in Camera Lucida features in a deeply moving section in which Barthes mourns the death of his mother. Here he says that he never discoursed with his mother or “educated her” (72), as though such things as discourse and education are antithetical to the singular love – of “this” mother, not “the” mother (of psychoanalysis and anthropology).

In the previous paper I gave on this topic, I argued that (a) Barthes makes us wonder whether the whole educational enterprise is a mediocre, pedestrian business; (b) subjectification as defined by Biesta is not an educational function, but education’s dysfunction; (c) that what should matter most to us is “not” education, “not” intended, and that we might call this “negative” education and; (d) noted that, for Barthes this negative education is productive of a form of expressive writing. I have come to feel that the problem with these claims are several. Firstly, how could the experience of the punctum generate expression when Barthes explicitly says: “absolute subjectivity is achieved only in a state, an effort, of silence” (p. 54). He seems to contradict himself and I failed to acknowledge this. Moreover, the deconstructive bent of my use of the term “negative education” is at odds with a philosophy which appears to hold to a hard binary distinction. These seem to be intractable problems. In this paper I argue that Derrida offers a way to navigate through them.

Abstract continued..... In his essay ‘The Deaths of Roland Barthes’ (2007), Derrida acknowledges that Barthes can, in places, be understood to offer the clear cut opposition discussed above. However, he notes that “in other places, at other times, Barthes accedes to another demand, let’s call it phenomenological since the book also presents itself as a phenomenology” (Derrida, 2007, p. 288). Barthes’ professed phenomenological approach occludes essences – despite appearances Barthes cannot be claiming that ontological purity applies to his concepts (if they are rightly thought of as “concepts” at all). Given Barthes’ commitment to a form of phenomenology: “It is indeed necessary for him to recognise. And this is not a concession, that the punctum is not what it is” (ibid). Rather, “the concepts that seemed the most squarely opposed, or opposable, were put into play by him, the one for the other, in a metonymic composition”. Metonymic relations are characterised by contiguity and touching – the punctum, on Derrida’s account touches the studium. Barthes attributes a metonymic power to the punctum (Barthes, 2000, p. 45) and claims that it punctures and “punctuates” the studium (26). The allusion to punctuation is surely hinting at an analogy between the asignifying punctuation marks of the sentence which allow for the possibility of meaning and the punctum as a mark on the photograph which supplies meaning of another sort (where “meaningfulness” denotes “poignancy”). Derrida plays on the etymological links between puncturing, poignancy and punctuation. The metonymic relationship studium/punctum means that the stark choice between empty speech and silence undergoes deconstruction. The “metonymy of the punctum….allows us to speak, to speak of the unique, to speak of it and to it” (Derrida, p. 289). For Derrida, the punctum fulfils the role of the supplement, something that is: “an addition from the outside, but it can also be understood as supplying what is missing and in this way is already inscribed within that to which it is added”.

Abstract continued.... To get a sense of what Derrida's reading of Barthes might mean educationally/practically speaking, imagine a scenario in which one follows a certain training to read a photograph before becoming distracted by a detail. When I meet resistance from the photograph to speak and give up some deeper meaning, the photograph’s punctum then punctures/touches the studium. This moment of contiguity enriches my reading and saves it from a sterile semiotic analysis – something bleeds out of me “as” I read the photograph. Here education (of a pedestrian sort) is supplemented by the poignancy of the singular. An education without “punctuation” is, from this perspective a poor education indeed. In this paper, I will extend the discussion of punctuation and poignancy in education beyond a limited concern with photography. I argue that there is scope for thinking about subjectification (in its richest sense) as bound up with “poignancy”. Exposure to the supplement that is both “not” education “and” inscribed within the educational enterprise, allows for the emergence of expressive unique voices. Framing things in this way legitimates the deconstructive tenor of the term “negative education” which was not earnt in earlier work. I argue that hospitality to punctuation/poignancy as discussed above is particularly, if not exclusively germane to traditional practices of reading and writing within the Arts and Humanities. Concerns regarding the current threat posed by AI to such practices often gravitate towards relatively trivial matters such as cheating. A potentially greater tragedy wrought by AI would be the suppression of poignancy in education.

Barthes, R. Camera Lucida; London, Vintage, UK, 2000 Derrida, J. Psyche: Inventions of the Other; Stanford, Stanford University Press, USA, 2007 Ranciere, J. The Future of the Image; London, Verso, UK, 2007