on the uses and abuses of deleuze & guattari for educational research
TRANSCRIPT
On the Uses and Abuses of Deleuze &
Guattari in educational research
David R Cole
Gilles Deleuze
French philosopher‘Rewrote’ the history of philosophyApplied philosophy to other areas; e.g. art, cinema…Developed a political approach with Guattari…
1925-1995
Félix Guattari
Political activist, writer and thinkerStudied psychoanalysis under Jacques LacanMay ’68Practised anti-psychiatry at La Borde
1930-1992
Collaborative texts
Anti-Oedipus (1972).Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (1975).A Thousand Plateaus (1980).On the Line (1983). Contains translation of
"Rhizome" (1976).Nomadology: The War Machine. (1986). Translation
of chapter 12 of A Thousand Plateaus.What is Philosophy? (1991).
Why Deleuze & Guattari?
• Conceptual toolbox• Analysis of capitalism• Political philosophy• Means to join the highly subjective and personal
(affect) with macro analysis of world systems (capitalism)
• Includes art and science• Gives understanding of lived, open and emergent
systems…
Schizoanalysis
• Capitalism can make us‘mad’through unfettered production – advertising - marketing
• Desire• Deep processes of synthesis: – connective,
conjunctive - disjunctive • The body-without-organs (Bwo)• Desiring-machines• territorialisation• What is wrong with the oedipal family?
Rhizomatics
• Plateaus dated, in time…• Assemblage• Machinic phylum• Nomadology• The refrain (la ritournelle)• Affect• The plane of immanence
Applications in education
• What is learning?• What is evidence?• What is research?• The asking of relevant questions for a research
project…• Conceptual/theoretical and methodological
decisions for researchers• How to write up a research project?• Why do research… ‘Rethinking research’- bridging the theory/practice
divide…
Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT)
• Literacies are wholly separate yet completely inter-related…
• In any given content there are multiple micro (personal) and macro (political) literacies: MLT goes beyond such dualism
• For example, students will exhibit literacies from their L1 + culture, hybrid (global) literacies and emerging Australian literacies
• The skill of the teacher/researcher using MLT is to encourage the different flows and execution of multiple literacies.
• Choose examples for pedagogy that offer affordances for multiple literacies
Affective literacy
• Is about using affects in the literacy classroom• Choose relevant, high impact material• Affective literacy emphasises the use and
transmission of affect, and not the start or endpoint of the students’ language abilities…
• Puts language production as primary in the classroom
• Includes the analysis of the power of language• Works between visual stimulation and language
production as cognitive mediation…
Multiliteracies
• Multimodality – meaning making using different modes
• Modes are: linguistic; spatial; audio; visual; gestural.
• Design (social futures)• Critical framing as pedagogy• Literacy practice that recognises the
mediation of ICT• Choose activities that use different modes of
expression and can be completed in groups with ICT
Superdiversity
• What is the current reality for recently arrived immigrants in Western Sydney?
• How can we understand the mixture of languages, cultures and movement of people in Western Sydney…
• The classroom as a microcosm of societal trends
• Researchers/ teachers and students can be ethnographers of language/culture and their inter-relationships
• Language maps
Educational Life-forms
The 2-role model of affect
Deleuzian critical-thinking-practice
THE EIGHT POSTULATES1. The Postulate of the Principle, or the Cogitatio
natural universalis:2. The Postulate of the Ideal, or Common Sense:3. The Postulate of the Model, or of Recognition: 4. The Postulate of the Element, or Representation:5. The Postulate of the Negative, or of Error:6. The Postulate of the Logical Function, or the
Proposition:7. The Postulate of the Modality, or Solutions:8. The Postulate of the End or the Result, or the
Postulate of Knowledge:.
Globalisation
“The global system of post-industrial and newly industrializing worlds produces scattered and poly-centered yet always profit-oriented power relations which function not so much by binary oppositions but in a fragmented and all-pervasive manner. The rhizomic or web-like structure of contemporary power, however, does not alter fundamentally its terms of application. If anything, power relations in globalization are more ruthless than ever,” (Braidotti, 2012, p. 169).
Cartography (Guattari)
The four divisions of the unconscious diagram deal with: 1) cut-outs of existential territories; 2) complexions of material and energetic flows; 3) rhizomes of abstract ideas and 4) constellations of aesthetic refrains. Perhaps more tangibly, one could say about these 4 zones that they are — i) the ground beneath your feet; ii) the turbulence of social experience; iii) the blue sky of ideas and; iv) the rhythmic insistence of waking dreams.
