Aesthetic/empathetic punctures through poetry: a Lacanian slip into something other than education

In this chapter I argue that to practice poetry, or to live poetically, is an artmaking process where the self has an aesthetic/empathetic sense of being in the world. I utilize Lacanian theory to explain how artmaking processes of aesthetics/empathy (1) resist the long-standing traditions of modernist education, and (2) create worlds of desire where desire is not hidden or disciplined in a social form. Tightly coupled, perhaps even functioning as a singular concept, aesthetic and empathetic artmaking processes can create distortions and disruptions to overly familiarized aesthetic norms, not only for personal meaning, but for relating to others who share those same experiences as human beings. Rather than call for more artmaking in education, I contend that an aesthetic/empathetic orientation to pedagogy might be so different from current, modernistic educational practices that it would be more publically valuable and viable for young people to participate in something other than education as a means to attain the social objectives that having an education implies.