Educational leaders and their witnesses: an arts-based psychoanalytic inquiry into the performance of ir/rational administrative acts

Abstract

This study endeavors to unsettle the normative assumptions that construct administrative rationality. It uncloaks illusions of control over self and others in educational leadership spaces through a psychoanalytic exploration of the inheritance of intergenerational trauma from one’s familial witnesses. The interrogation takes the form of an arts-based method of playwriting to create an encounter with some of the voices and characters that haunt the actors in educational administration. I call forth the concept of the specter with its etymological links to looking (del Pilar Blanco & Peeren, 2013) to think about the ways in which one’s witnesses bequeath psychological inheritances that wreak havoc with one’s capacity to be rational in administrative spaces. The first part of the study poses questions about the psychological conditions that make it possible for the appearance of witnesses. To that end, the study asks, how do one’s witnesses influence who one was, who one is and who one wants to become as an educational administrator? In pursuit of these psychoanalytic questions, I wrote a three act play called, Sincere Liars. The play explores the relationships between the witnesses who lurk in the unconscious and the pulse of countertransference that beats in many leadership performances. To speak about an administrative hauntology (Derrida, 1994), the third part of the study considers the inheritance of psychological distortions that live in the dreams, memories and the childhood dramas that are sometimes uncritically rehearsed in administrative spaces. Cautions about the practice of memorializing one’s capacity to overcome emotionally depleting struggles as a blessing in disguise are offered. The study concludes with a provocation to professors of educational administration to problematize the absence of psychoanalytic interpretations of leadership work.