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Bruce A. Arrigo, "Reason and Desire in Legal Education: A Psychoanalytic-Semiotic Critique", International Journal for the Semiotics of Law / Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique Vol. XI no.31 (1998), 3-24: Critiques of legal education have become commonplace. Selected essays are now exploring the role of language in the process of transmitting knowledge in the instructional milieu. Missing from these assessments, however, has been any consideration of the unconscious mechanisms activated and at work which already encode juridical discourse. This paper applies a Lacanian-inspired psychoanalytic-semiotics of law to the method of legal education. Several of Lacan's conceptualizations on discourse and knowledge are presented in detail in order to explain what reason and desire are embedded in legal education. The paper demonstrates how the argot of law-speak unconsciously privileges its own discourse while invalidating and de-legitimizing all other ways of knowing, all other voices, and, in the process, limiting one's understanding of juridical knowledge. This paper concludes by suggesting several Lacanian-based strategies which might make possible a deeper appreciation for the law while participating in legal education.

Bruce A. Arrigo, Ph.D. received his doctorate from the Pennsylvania State University in the Administration of Justice. He is Professor of Forensic Psychology and Criminology and the Director of the Institute of Psychology, Law, and Public Policy at the California School of Professional Psychology-Fresno. He has published some 40 monographs, peer-review articles, or academic book chapters dealing with issues in crime, law, justice, and community. His most recent books include The Contours of Psychiatric Justice (Garland, 1996); the anthology Justice At The Margins: The Maturation of Critical Theory in Law, Crime, and Deviance (Wadsworth, forthcoming 1997) and with T.R. Young Chaos and Crime: From Criminal Justice to Social Justice (SUNY Press, forthcoming 1998). Recent articles have appeared in Justice Quarterly, Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, Critical Criminology, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Crime, Law, and Social Change, and Theoretical Criminology. Professor Arrigo is also the Editor of the social science quarterly, Humanity and Society.

Direct all correspondence to Bruce A. Arrigo, Professor and Director, Institute of Psychology, Law, and Public Policy, CSPP-Fresno, 5130 E. Clinton Way, Fresno, California, 93727. Email correspondence: barrigo@mail.cspp.edu

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