Educational life-forms: Deleuzian teaching and learning practice

Dr. David R Cole

University of Technology, Sydney

New life-formsAn aesthetic-material approach

machines

Deleuzian teaching and learning practice

A philosophy of life

• …A Life?...No one has described what a life is better than Charles Dickens (Our Mutual friend) if we take the indefinite article as an index of the transcendental. A disreputable man, a rogue, held in contempt by everyone, is found dying. Suddenly, those taking care of him manifest an eagerness, respect, even love, for his slightest sign of life. Everyone bustles about to save him, to the point where, in his deepest coma, this wicked man himself senses something soft and sweet penetrating him. But to the degree that he comes back to life, his saviours turn colder, and he becomes once again mean and crude. Between his life and his death, there is a moment that is only that of a life playing with death (Deleuze, 2007, p. 391).

bergson

• Apply the test of true and false to problems themselves. Condemn false problems and reconcile truth and creation at the level of problems (false problems are of 2 sorts, ‘non-existent problems’ defined as problems whose very terms contain a confusion of the more and the less; and ‘badly stated’ questions, so defined because their terms represent badly analysed composites).

• Struggle against illusion, rediscover the true differences in kind or articulations of the real (the real is not only that which is cut out according to natural articulations or differences in kind; it is also that which intersects again along paths converging toward the same ideal or virtual point).

• State problems and solve them in terms of time rather than of space. (Deleuze, 1991, pp.15-31).

marxThe social pyramid

spinoza

nietzsche

• There are lives with prodigious difficulties; these are the lives of the thinkers. And we must lend an ear to what we are told about them, for here we discover possibilities of life the mere story of which gives us joy and strength and sheds light on the lives of their successors. There is much invention, reflection, boldness, despair and hope here as in the voyages of great navigators; and to tell the truth, these are also voyages of exploration in the most distant and perilous domains of life. What is surprising in these lives is that 2 opposed instincts, which pull in opposite directions, seem to be forced to walk under the same yolk: the instinct that leads to knowledge is constantly constrained to abandon the ground where man habitually lives and to throw itself into the uncertain, and the instinct that wills life is forced to grope ceaselessly in the dark for a new place to establish itself (Deleuze, 1983, p. 94).

normativity

• The penal system, which goes from the secrecy of torture and the spectacle of executions to the refined use of ‘model-prisons’ in which some may acquire advanced university degrees, while others resort to a contented life of tranquilizers, brings us back to the ambiguous demands and perverse constraints of a progressivism that is, however, unavoidable and even beneficent (Blanchot, 1987, p. 83).

exams

• The substance reflects the form: this is not the arena for risk. Thus the examination produces the familiar double-bind: lurking in the shadows is the image of the brilliant script, which is offered in terms not of a formal perfection but a master-stroke, the single God-given answer which will convince that here is a potential hero of a generation. But this is, of course, not really possible, however much candidates may brag afterwards: and thus the image of the perfect answer to the all-consuming questions of the State is continually withheld, proffered but out of reach, confirming in advance the authority of the Board, convincing the candidates that it is better to be safe than to take the risk the effects of which, after all, nobody will ever see (Punter, 1986, p. 269).

tasmaniaAn example of changing

practice

epiphanies

• Definition A: [An Epiphany is] “a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. It is for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, as they are the most delicate and evanescent of moments. It is when the soul of the commonest object…seems to us radiant,” (Joyce, 1944, p. 213).

• Definition B: “Epiphanies are interactional moments and experiences which leave marks on people’s lives. In them, personal character is manifested. They are often moments of crisis. They alter the fundamental meaning structures in a person’s life,” (Denzin, 1989, p. 70).

• Denzin (1989) argues that there are four kinds of epiphanic moment: 1) the major upheaval; 2) the cumulative; 3) illuminative; 4) relived. Each meaning centres on the problematic (p. 83) nature of the experience.

Eternal return

• Pierre Klossowski (1997) termed this linkage [of the eternal return] as a “declarative mood” and one that reveals the “tonality of the soul” (p. 100). The eternal return makes things happen in that it is a bridging mechanism between the conceptual resources that one might bring to a problem, for example, a teacher working through and questioning their reasons and methods of engaging the students, and the practical consequences of this situation, such as asking introspective questions and making pedagogic changes in one’s teaching methods. It is not the moral principles of the teacher that are in the spotlight here, but the ethical codes that one holds and practices, and the passion for the job that one demonstrates in ‘the moment’.

Levels of experience

• Deleuzian teaching and learning practice [therefore] contains a turbulent, yet creative base that often sets values and beliefs against themselves through epiphanies. The point here is not to apply Deleuze’s philosophy in a meek and responsible way to education, but to find the ruptures in teaching and learning that might lead to (an)other manner in which to teach. Deleuze’s philosophy of life therefore puts into erasure assumptions about experience in teaching and learning and creates alternate realities through which penetrating questions may be asked.

The virtual

• The primary and yet malleable connection between the construction of the virtual and learning that we may derive from the philosophy of Deleuze (1994), lies in the conception and deployment of multiplicities. Multiplicities may be conceived of as abstract entities tied to reality through the agent or agents transforming knowledge (Deleuze, 1994). The Deleuzian notion of multiplicities responds to hybrid reasoning that is not canonical or entirely original. Deleuze used Nietzschean plurality to focus the ways in which multiplicities act through duration (durée), that comes from the unconscious in Bergson. The notion of Nietzschean force is never singular; it is always a differential between other forces. This qualifies Nietzsche’s interest in the ways in which schemes or perspectives “interact, attract, convince, corrupt, and incorporate one another” (Richardson, 1996, p. 264).

The cone of memory

How to use memory

VR automata

• The reproduction of capitalism in schools makes the necessity for virtual value, as it codifies the practises and values of teachers and their interaction with the students (most physicists and mathematicians now work for the military). Capitalism in this sense interrupts the analogue relationship between communities of learners, and simultaneously produces singular instances of virtual value that are disparate from the host communities. Contained in these singular instances that are analogue, yet teachable as digital through VR and the philosophical virtual, are the diagrammatic representations of abstract machines, which demonstrate the ways in which VR is immanent without being prone to reproduction

The 2-role model of affect

1st role of affect

2nd role of affect

Talking with Unconscious-affect

• In the role of the analyst, Freud took it on himself to name the affect in the dreams, and to discuss the various ways in which the patients have articulated affect in their monologues

• Freud’s point of introducing the Id, Ego and Super-ego was a distinctive layering in the analysis. These factors are representative of disunity that is a mode of abundance that always exceeds disciplinary regimes or any discourses of control or limitation such as definitions of the self

Spinozism

• Philosophers such as Lloyd have taken this idea to infuse the mind with sexuality, as the Spinozist positioning of affectus with power leads one away from desexed, disembodied ideas…

• The coded language of teaching manuals and professional practice reproduces the body-without-organs because they may drain the sprightly sexual body of emergent life through internalisation and the potential subjectification to inflexible regulation…

• Erotic language-affects give us a way of talking about these (educative) connections, and applying the two-role model of affect to the transformations of the body in the education system…

frankenstein

conclusion

• The various forms of education or ‘normalization’ imposed upon an individual consist in making him or her change points of subjectification, always moving towards a higher, nobler one in closer conformity with the supposed ideal. Then from the point of subjectification issues a subject of enunciation, as a function of a mental reality determined by that point. Then from the subject of enunciation issues a subject of the statement, in other words, a subject bound to statements in conformity with a dominant reality. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988, p.129).

references• Blanchot, M. (1987). Michel Foucault as I imagine him. New York: Zone Books.

• Deleuze, G. (1983). Nietzsche and Philosophy, (H. Tomlinson, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.

• Deleuze, G. (1991). Bergsonism, (H. Tomlinson & B. Habberjam, Trans.). New York: Zone Books.

• Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference & Repetition, (P. Patton, Trans.). London: The Athlone Press.

• Deleuze, G. (2007). Two Regimes of Madness (A. Hodges & M. Taormina Trans.). New York: Semiotext(e).

• Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1988). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia II (B. Massumi, Trans.). London: The Athlone Press.

• Denzin, N.K. (1989). Interpretive Biography. Newbury Park, N.Y.: Sage Publications.

• Joyce, J. (1944). Stephen Hero, T. Spencer (Ed.). New York: New York Directions.

• Klossowski, P. (1997). Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle (D.W. Smith, Trans.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

• Punter, D. (1986). Examinations. In: D. Punter (Ed.). Introduction to Contemporary Cultural Studies (pp. 267-270). London: Longman.

• Richardson, J. (1996). Nietzsche's System. Oxford: Oxford University Press.