Six Acts of Miscognition: Implications for Art Education

Abstract

Employing Lacanian theory as a necessary supplement to contemporary approaches in art education, this article provides a critique and response to art education discourse around “cognition.” This response unfolds in six acts: (1) Unknown knowledge, (2) Unmeant knowledge, (3) Missing metaphors, (4) Stupidity, (5) Symptoms and sinthomes, and (6) Truth untold. These six acts presuppose the given symbolic order of cognitive theories in art education and attempt to disturb the fantasmatic kernel of these theories for the larger field. Together, the six acts articulate the concept that every act of cognition in art education is also an act of “miscognition.”