Re-Imagining the Unconscious Heritage. From Trauma to Project, Ethics and Aesthetics of Afterwardsness

Abstract

In the field of a Philosophy of education that recognizes in Subjectivation the core of its research, this contribution adopts the articulation of subjectivity through Lacanian-derived instances at both clinical and theoretical levels. Starting from the notion of “the subject of the unconscious”, the associated concept of “heritage” takes shape as the sum of identifications and symbolizations that constitute subjectivity. From this point, the pedagogical perspective, directed towards the authenticity of the process of subjectivation, plays its role through the ethical-aesthetical possibilities for the subject to retrospectively reinterpret its own “endowment”. In the second section, the contribution provides an insight into the dialogue between art and ecology, proposing a design intervention born from the Xylella emergency in Salento and the need to use Land Art as an educational and awareness tool. It begins with a community art experience that reconfigures the signifier “heritage” as a product of cultural discourse in the dialectic between subject and institution.