Repository | Book | Chapter

This chapter revisits Paul Standish's earlier work exploring ideas of Roland Barthes in relation to education. It concerns the way that iconic signs function, as found for example in Barthe's Mythologies. Semiological analysis of this kind provides a rich means of critically considering contemporary educational practice as well as educational research itself. Lynda Stone's work within this research group is relevant in some respects to this critique. The discussion examines the extent to which an iconography might be re-appropriated, not merely through a change in the terms and other forms that are current but through a reappraisal of the force of the iconic in contemporary thought and practice. Ironically perhaps, iconography today in its dominant forms hides its iconic nature through a kind of naturalisation. In response to this there may be ways of retrieving a sense of the religious force of the icon in order to disturb this naturalisation. One example of such a strategy is Bill Readings' attempt to reclaim the university from its ruins by way of a reassertion of the "name of Thought". Critically insightful as Readings' "The University in Ruins' is in many respects, his attempt to speak more positively is not entirely convincing. In the light of this relative failure, this chapter advocates a sensitising to signs that does not seek to install them in new iconic roles. This will have a bearing not only on educational practice but on the possibilities of educational research.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-03083-8_12

Full citation: