markconnell_deleuzianpedagogy

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From Shame to Joy: Derivinga Pedagogical Approach from

Gilles Deleuze

By

Mark Connell

TPS-OISE, University of Toronto

Copyright 2008 by Mark Connell


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The only revolutionary is a joyful revolutionary

Gilles DeleuzeDesert Islands and Other Texts pg. 250


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A prevailing theme within post-structural theory references the ways in which the

structure of society, the weight of history and the legacy of language habituates

obedience and undermines the potential for freedom. For some, the totalizing and

pervasive diffusion of complex forms of soft control, accompanied with the

establishments uncanny ability to re-channel attempts at subversion represents a new

age defined as post-political, the refusal of politics or by the end of politics (Lotringer

10). French philosopher J ean Baudrillard captures the enormity of what is at stake in a

post-political world. He nihilistically argues the code is totalitarian; no one escapes it;

our individual flights do not negate the fact that each day we participate in its collective

elaboration (Baudrillard "The System of Objects" 22). In a most profound sense, it is all

too evident that the desire for autonomy, liberty and freedom is not simply a political

project [but] a project for existence (Lotringer 10).

In the preface to Anti-Oedipus, Michel Foucault makes the case that Deleuze and

Guattari are embarking on an ethical project in which questions are less concerned with

why this and why that then with how to proceed (Foucault xii). For Foucault the crisis

of post-modernity is framed in ethical terms. If liberty is the ontological condition for

ethics[and] ethics is the deliberate form assumed by liberty, (Wain 163) then the

central concern becomes how the capacity for self-expression is derailed by the

repressive technologies of power. A Foucauldian analysis also suggests that ones own

self-constitution as a subject is contingent upon a condition of striving and bound

inextricably to ones own ethical potential or in Deluzian terms ones becoming (Wain

165). Expanding on these prepositions, Deleuzian philosophy defines ethics as a

creative capacity for action. To escape the oppressive and inherently deterministic ways

of being, the realization that the limits we face are both historical and contingent, opens

the possibility for creativity and thus the capacity for becoming (May 9). At this point in

the discussion it would seem that a pedagogical model derived from Deleuze is

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committed to a deterritorialization of established education practices, or as Heidegger

discusses, a project of educating against ones preexisting ontotheological education

(Thomson 137).

While keeping in mind the multiple ways in which productive acts can be

composed, this paper will attempt to break open the problem field of being teacher. My

own experience would suggest that the teacher is a focal point in exploring the broader

schema of structural violence within educational institutions. This is because the teacher

is not only subjugated by the limits of the school but they also inevitably reproduce the

oppressive homogenizing function of the institution within their relationships with their

students. The shameful degree to which all educators are imbricated in this problem

demands critical attention.1 In the paper, I will outline what I believe to be three

interrelated kinds of work that are implied within a pedagogical approach inspired by

the writings of Gilles Deleuze. The majority of this paper will provide an overview

exploring why teaching requires a nomadic strategy to negotiate the forces of

sedimentation and stratification that characterize education in its institutional form.

Inevitably, this does not only involve negotiating the limits that institutions impose but

understanding how a particular teachers servitude to signs determines unsatisfactory

and unproductive relations and outcomes. The constructive contribution of Deleuze

suggests that an attentiveness to affect opens a capacity for new sets of relations in

which solutions to real problems may be found. I will conclude with an examination of

the concept of shock to thought as a pedagogical tool that compels thought into action

1Referring to my own practice, it is noteworthy that many of my First Nation students

articulate how Canadian educational institutions (specifically my own school) continue to

oppressively function as a mechanism of assimilation. Residential schools no longer

exist but the unsatisfactory colonial processes of assimilation seem to continue.Although schools are filled with many teachers with good intentions, First Nations

students feel continuously marginalized in numerous ways by numerous processes.

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within the context of my own practice as a high school teacher. Ultimately, a Deluzian

pedagogy enframes the teacher as a facilitator that connects, conjugates and continues

lines of flight. It is a practice that is rooted in a common solidarity and is productive in

scope. In contrast to the totalizing effect of Baudrillards code, a Deleuzian pedagogy

reclaims the potential of productive relations and marks the possibility of a return to

politics.

The Institutional Production of Shameful Ways of Relating, Affectivity and aPractice of Nomadism

For Guattari and Deleuze, the year 7000 B.C. marks a significant moment of

disruption in the human story. At this point the state emerges as it overcodes modes

of living within primitive agricultural societies. Referring to Marxist analysis, this moment

establishes the socio-political mechanisms necessary for a triumph of capital, the

creation of a pervasive, systematic apparatus of capture (Deleuze and Guattari 573 -

75). The various modalities of capture are amplified within a modern nation state since

technological development substitutes social subjection for machinic enslavement

(Deleuze and Guattari 505). 7000 B.C.: Apparatus of Capture articulates the

implications of the States appropriation of the war machine2. Deleuze argues that the

state apparatus makes mutilation come firstas it needs at its base and summit pre-

disabled people, preexisting amputees, the stillborn, the congenitally infirmed, the one-

eyed and the one-armed (Deleuze and Guattari 470). Of particular importance to a

pedagogical approach seeking autonomy or ethical capacity, is to deconstruct how a

2Deleuze and Guattari invoke the term war machine as a multi-layered concept with

creative, historical, political and philosophical levels. At times, Deleuze and Guattaridescribe war as a machine of production directed against the production of governed,

docile bodies and regulated, stable flows of power (357). For the sake of this discussion I

simplistically refer to the war machine as creative/productive thought.

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particular regime of signs is able to create the necessary pre-disabled polis to sustain

and perpetuate itself.

In the context of liberal democracy this inevitably leads to a sedimentation of

social relations that are solidified by pretensions of freedom (Deleuze and Guattari 481,

507). In the article Hannah Arendt & J ean Baudrillard: Pedagogy in the Consumer

Society, Trevor Norris discuses how this process is manifested within contemporary

schools. Implicating educational institutions in the apparatus of capture he illustrates

how contemporary education is being reduced to the reproduction of private

accumulation, [thus] preventing social resistance from expressing itself as anything other

than political apathy (Norris 474). In addition to the visible encroachment of corporate

interests within educational environments, standardized curriculum, board wide

discipline policies and obsession with a continuous practice of formative assessment

reflect the inherent functionality of the school. If for Deleuze the war machine

represents the formulation of new kinds of ideas through thought, then this discussion

reveals the cyclical consequences of its institutional appropriation, namely

homogenization and subordination.

Baudrillard discusses this dynamic in terms of the emergence of consummativity.

He states, needs can no longer be defined adequately in terms of naturalistic

idealismthey are a function of the internal logic of the systemas a productive force

required by the functioning of the system itself (Baudrillard "The Ideological Genesis of

Needs" 73). In its most diluted form this represents a soft imperialism of sorts, in which

the colonized believe they are exerting democratic autonomy as they choose their

commercial indenture (Barber xxi). In Democracy Matters philosopher Cornel West

raises a practical example of this process. He observes that for many African American

youth, Dr. Kings quest to let freedom ring has been replaced by the pursuit of bling-

bling. West notes that as freedom is being reconstructed as the ability to acquire

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material wellbeing, the ability to scrutinize all forms of dogmatic policing of dialogue and

authoritarian strategies of silencing voices is hampered (West 5). On a deeper level the

more problematic reality is how a persons adhesion to the system is guised as choice

(Massumi A Shock to Thought : Expressions after Deleuze and Guattari xvi).

Paraphrasing an element of Massumis Autonomy of Affect, the pervasive confidence

by which goods and services are sold to individuals as needs represents the emotional

translation of affect as capturable life potential (Massumi "The Autonomy of Affect"

234).

This digression brings to light how the provocative and unifying signs of dissent

can re-appropriated by the apparatus of capture and reemployed to meet the

requirements of the capitalistic state.3 Again, this ontological robbery is possible through

the logic of signification as the exteriority of the sign masks the social relations of

production and the reality of the inherently oppressive division of labour (Baudrillard "The

Ideological Genesis of Needs" 59). At the same time the educational nature of this

process is evident as the subject itself is persuaded to cooperate, obey and thus itself

becomes a sign herself (Deleuze "Coldness and Cruelty" 21). Deleuze argues that

semiotic systems depend on assemblages, and it is the assemblages that determine a

given peoplecan assure the predominance of one semiotic over another (Deleuze

and Guattari 132). In concrete terms, the subjects affectivity becomes the opening by

which this persuasion takes hold and becomes habituated as something that is natural

or rational. Within mainstream educational discourse this overt ontological oppression is

guised as natural socialization, necessary for social cohesion and cultural replication.

This tension reveals a very important operation in which processes that are contingently

3To further support this point bell hooks discusses how rap music (initially medium of

dissent) has been appropriated by mainstream media/culture and instead of being

unifying productive element of a counter culture reproduces misogyny and oppression.

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtoanes_L_g&feature=related

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obligatory are equivocated as being logically necessary (Delanda A New Philosophy of

Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity).

Within the psyche of the educator, it is noteworthy how common sense and

common practices act as a barrier to affectivity. Boler argues that the most oppressive

regime of signs is commonsense (Boler "Assembled Emotions and Muant Affects:

Toward a Semiotics of (Un)Domesticated Feeling " 21). Operating via common sense,

consciousness distorts difference and reinforces an interpretation of the world in terms

of ready made questions and pre-existing solutions (Bogue 336). For Deleuze, the

dynamic unfolding of the world is a process that escapes common sense and defies the

set strict categories imposed by consciousness (Bogue 329). It is common practice, for

example, that dictates that a students flagrant disruption of classroom normalcy should

result in expulsion from the class. This set policy of expulsion introduces a physical limit

that annihilates the possibility of anything being changed by this moment of disruption.

By extension, the physical structure of the school, the school calendar, the chain of

command, the policy-based responses to discipline issues, the subordination of

interests, each limit the potential of affective connections and also the potential for

productive solidarities from emerging at all.

Conventional methods of classroom management reflect this operation.

Practically speaking the teacher inevitably seeks to fashion the student, to persuade her

to cooperate and get her to sign. Particularly in delivering a standardized curriculum,

the teacher is most convincing when contingent ways of knowing are sold as factual or

as logically necessary. Deleuze argues that persuasion and obedience to a transcendent

ideal marks the focal point of a central problem. The danger of education is how

students are forced to commit to an idealized role, that they will inevitably prove to be

inadequate (Deleuze "Coldness and Cruelty" 20). This particular point reveals the

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shamefulness inherent in this educational process; representing a transgression against

autonomy, freedom and ethical capacity.

This theme is developed in Deleuzes essay Coldness and Cruelty. In it

Deleuze provides general insights into kinds of relations formulated within educational

contexts in relation to affect. In a general sense Deleuze argues that institutions act as

societal molds in which humans are pressed into a definite forms. This process of

molding is a function of the apparatus of capture in which relations are determined in

ways that are consistent with the needs of society. This is a process where, children

become students, rabble become workers, recruits becomes soldiers (Protevi 145).

Deleuze also notes that as societies increasingly become control orientated, institutions

function as a modulators. This is evident within our own schools as student potential

is streamed into specific curricular areas at a relatively early age. Massumi captures the

ontological consequences of this process in Requiem for Our Prospective Dead. He

agues that the modulating functionality of global capital reveals humanity as a

collective, affective, generative matrix, [that] is too essentially changeable, too multiply

determinable, to be attributed to the pallid integrity of moral personhood (Massumi

"Requiem for Our Prospective Dead: Towards a Participatory Critique of Capitalism"

60). Massuimi states the subject embodies the system of mediationthat a subject is

made to be in conformity with the system that produced it, such that the subject

reproduces the system (Massumi A Shock to Thought : Expressions after Deleuze and

Guattari xvi). To summarize, despite the superficial attempts at character education and

developing moral intelligence, the very nature of the educational institution reflects an

oppressive tension that undermines the capacity for counter establishment activities,

relations and potential.

Poignantly evident in times of socio-political crisis, philosopher Megan Boler

critiques the failure of the academic institution to facilitate productive solidarities asking

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What is it about institutionalized power relations that constructs isolation and

powerlessness?" (Boler "License to Feel: Teaching in the Context of War(S)" 3). This

process is also reflective of a particular nihilistic angst or sense of futility experienced by

educators who feel compromised and conflicted in their work. Describing how this

process undermines potentiality, Deleuze states the judgment of God uproots it from its

immanence and makes it an organism, a signification, a subjectiication (Deleuze and

Guattari 176). These compulsions themselves are a product of a systematic education

that habituates the illusion of pure reason in transcendental terms. The central

pedagogical problem thus becomes manifest: How can the teacher move beyond

habituated ways of being and reclaim immanence? How can one re-appropriate the

judgment of God and initiate a perpetual conflict aimed at solving the problems that

characterize the classroom, the school and beyond?

Exploring the contributions of Spinoza, Deleuze identifies particular tools and

practices to pry away potentiality from the apparatus of capture (Deleuze Spinoza,

Practical Philosophy 21). Deleuze distinguishes the two factors constituting a

psychological dualism that is indicative of this problematic relation. The first being the

imperative/descriptive or personal element which directs and describes the subject and

directs individual tastes (Deleuze "Coldness and Cruelty" 19). The second and higher

factor represents the impersonal element within the subjective consciousness that

identifies with an Idea of pure reason (Deleuze "Coldness and Cruelty" 20). The

implication being that the impersonal element subordinates the personal and reproduces

itself with a mathematical ferocity. Nonetheless, Deleuze suggests that it is possible to

temporarily free potential from the processes of subjecification and signification.

Describing How to Make Yourself a Body Without Organs Deleuze and Guattari state,

Dismantling the organism [means] opening the body to connectionsthat presuppose an entire assemblagetearing the conscious away fromthe subject in order to make it a means of exploration, tearing the

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unconscious away from significance and interpretation in order to make ita veritable production (Deleuze and Guattari 177)

The movement between the forces that stratify the subject characterizes this tearing of

consciousness. Deleuze suggest that freeing lines of flight involves a meticulous

relation with the institutional strata (Deleuze and Guattari 178). In essence, Deleuzian

pedagogy promotes an engagement with the deeper affective investments that force

complictious relations with regimes of oppression, therefore extending possibilities of

free acts.

Introducing the idea of a controlled discomfort, Boler argues that the integration

of structures of feeling with the work of education can effectively displace pain and

powerlessness (Boler "License to Feel: Teaching in the Context of War(S)" 11). While

traditional educational institutions produce signs, a Deleuzian pedagogy promotes a

literacy of affect as the first step to a literacy of signs. A vulnerability to affect allows a

bridging of the gaps between the isolated internal life and the external visible life within

the school (Boler "License to Feel: Teaching in the Context of War(S)" 10). The idea of

being vulnerable to affect implies an intentional critical awareness of how one is affected

in emotive terms. This process evolves into a literacy of affect, which provides space to

contest signification (the production of signs) and understand signs in new ways. This

literacy of affectivity operates in contestation to the homogenizing tendencies of

educational institutions and promotes a kind a learning that rooted in solidarity

addresses real problems faced in the classroom.

In relation to actual practice, the ethical demands of teaching require that all of

the potentials of education are explored and conversely, the well-worn paths of

traditional practice are viewed with skepticism. This reveals the nomadic character of

becoming teacher. It is an awareness of limits and a movement around them. It is a

desire to create. It is to act in opposition to the internal and external processes of

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sedimentation and stratification. It represents a willingness to engage in a politics of

possibility through a continual critical engagement with texts, images and events and

other registers of meaning as they are transformed into public pedagogies (Giroux 19).

Embodying this kind of literacy the article Free-Run Children by Scott McIsaac

illustrates the productive capacity that can come from disruptive situations, if ones

capacity to be affected is not castrated by institutional barriers. In the overview of his

project McIsaac articulates how the inadequate physical limitations of the playground at

his school resulted in regular incidents of violence at recess (McIsaac 1). As a result,

McIsaac and his students embarked on an involved comparison of spaces and

resources between their own school and other schools in the area. He concludes that

despite overcrowding and being poorly served by space and resources his students are

able to construct meaning and to create and celebrate learning in dynamic ways

(McIsaac 8). This example illustrates how the artistic potential of the educator is

actualized when affective connections and conjunctions are made with students. It also

evokes a project that is mutual in scope, where an attempt is made to reconfigure the

contingent limits of school in ways that create new possibilities for everyone

(administrator, teacher, student, custodian) constrained by its totalizing tendencies.

In his essay entitled Deleuzes War Machine: Nomadism Against the State,

J ulian Reid states the nomadic strategy of the war machine [is] premised on the

exploration and exploitation of unforeseen forms of movement in escape of the formal

possibilities of thought (Reid 13). The nomadic war machine is a radical way of thinking

involving the formation, invention and fabrication of new concepts that violently differs

from existing and received orders of thought imposed by the state (Reid 3). Reid further

explains that it is the commitment to that ethos among nomads, whether consciously

understood or not, that acted to prevent the sedentarization and centralization of their

societies (Reid, 8). In a profound sense Reid is articulating the productive potential of

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what a pedagogy derived from Deleuze can hope to become. This is not to simplistically

argue that the teacher must only renounce traditional modes of education. Rather if

teaching is considered in the ethical terms ascribed by a Deleuzian philosophy, a central

responsibility involves a literacy of the signs in which one can recognize the structures

that enable and constrain ones activities (Giroux 24).

Interestingly, Deleuze implicitly makes the argument for understanding learning,

education and ultimately teaching as a practical work that seeks to improve on what we

are shameful (Delanda "Lecture on the Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze"). Not abstract in

any sense, the micro and macro implications of a world characterized by criminal

genderized and racialized underdevelopment, the structural violence of poverty and

ecological catastrophe demands urgent and creative solutions. To transcend the

shameful reality of what happens in schools, teaching requires that these issues be

taken up in serious ways. In terms of methodology, the nomadic character of the

teacher requires an important repositioning. It would seem for Deleuze the educator is

at the edge of a crowd, at the periphery; but belong[ing] to it, I amattached to it by one of my extremitiesI know that the periphery is the

only place that I can beit is not an easy position to stay in and it is evenvery difficult to hold, for these beings are in constant motion and theirmovements are unpredictable. ((Deleuze and Guattari 32).

Echoing Massumis exploration of the primacy of expression, teaching must represent

an enlargement of lifes limits through the pragmatic proliferation of concepts (Massumi

A Shock to Thought : Expressions after Deleuze and Guattari xxii). From the periphery

the teacher performs a function that is connective, conjunctive while also finding ways

extend the work occurring in the classroom out into the world.

Shock to Thought

The relevance of a pedagogy extrapolated from the writings of Deleuze relates to

his suggestion that the archaic state does not over code without also freeing a large

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quantity of decoded flows that escape from itand gives rise to new flows that escape

from it (Deleuze and Guattari 495). Deleuze argues that all decoded flows are prone to

forming a war machine directed against the state (Deleuze and Guattari 507). Educators

witness this decoding on a regular basis as young people resist the homogenizing forces

at work in the institution of learning. Teachers themselves are also constantly working

around the limits imposed by institutional constraints. On one hand, this reveals how the

school and teacher can be both a modality of conformity and/or an instrument of social

change. On the other, the task becomes how to mobilize these isolated pockets of

resistance into a collective movement that makes life better in a quantitative way for

those involved. Deleuze argues everything changes depending on whether these flows

connect up with a war machine or, on the contrary enter conjunctions that appropriate

them for the state (Deleuze and Guattari 507). The missing element of the project

becomes how the teacher can create moments of disruption, utilizing collective affect in

productive ways.

The task of this ethical pedagogy is most concerned with how one

performatively contributes to the stretch of expression in the world or conversely

prolongs its capture (Massumi A Shock to Thought : Expressions after Deleuze and

Guattari xxii). Learning in a Deleuzian sense refers to a moment of ascension, where a

body perceives and understands the world in a new way. In other words, learning is a

moment of disruption or a profound shock to thought (Massumi A Shock to Thought :

Expressions after Deleuze and Guattari). In concrete terms, learning entails a passage

to a threshold of consciousness at which our real acts are adjusted to our perceptions of

the real relations (Bogue 337). It is an ethical event in which, in spite of a tyranny of

habit, bodies emerge with strengthened potentiality. It also surpasses the limits of

intellectual speculation and is a call to action. This represents a pragmatic, robust and

embodied ethics that focuses on affectivity, bodily relations and effects (Malins 97).

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Operating in opposition to the tyranny of reason, the shock to thought is an event

that is primarily affective. Practically speaking, this could involve the creation and

exposure to paradoxical dualisms or creating opportunities in which problematic

concepts and controversial issues are engaged within the learning environment. In a

more robust way, the teacher provides avenues and opportunities for students to

encounter and clash with problematic binary constructions. Unfortunately there is no

shortage of these problematic categorizations within the Canadian educational

paradigm. Consequently, the teacher must be aware of how the internalization of these

binary polarizations and their production, consumption and recording within the

classroom culminates in the marginalization and subjugation of many students. At the

same time an awareness of how power and privilege invested in the maintenance of

these dualisms may block alternative relations from forming is required. Bolers

Pedagogy of Discomfort invites students and educators to examine how our modes of

seeing have been shaped specifically by the dominant culture of the historical moment

(Boler Feeling Power : Emotions and Education 179). The challenge becomes creating

moments that disrupt and unsettle while also ensuring a degree of safety and

vulnerability is maintained.

Beyond Shame: Continuing Lines of Flight

Massumi identifies a critical point at which a physical system paradoxically

embodies multiple and normally mutually exclusive potentials (Massumi "The Autonomy

of Affect" 226). An exploration of this critical moment reveals the nature of autonomous

educational practices that are not shameful; namely that they reflect an openness to new

ways of relating. The anarchistic reality of how a classroom operates affirms Deleuzes

preposition that things never pass where you think, nor along the paths you think

(Seigworth 160). Nonetheless, particular efforts affirm the effectiveness of a

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pedagogical practice that disrupts the ordinary habits through the immersion in alien and

uncomfortable environments. The physical discomfort of winter camping or ice climbing

not only facilitates emotive responses but also necessitates collective action. In the

same way, the emotional disruption implied by cross-cultural learning experiences

(characterized by culture shock) encourages an awareness of difference that transcends

the operation of common sense. I agree that the aim of these projects must move

beyond individualized self reflection and instead emphasize collective witnessing that

also calls people into action (Boler Feeling Power : Emotions and Education 176-79).

However, the central concern is raised How can these critical moments of affectivity be

continued or extended into lines that of flight to improve on what we are shameful in

concrete ways?

A recent email from a former student offers important reflective insight on the

implications of my use of shock to thought in my practice. She writes,

as you know the DR trip had quite an impact on me, and I haventstopped thinking about it. In order to get back into a routine, its like a hadto put all those feelings on hold for a while. I know I should haveembraced them to change the way I lived, but it felt like the only way to be

happy here again was to postpone it for a whileI used to think that Icould make a difference for others by researchingnow it feels like sucha stretch - too disjointed from the actual people. These changes to myfour year plan are scary and risky, but thinking about doing them nextyear is the only thing I have felt passionate about here at school.

This short note affirms how affect has compelled thought into action. However,

deconstructing this text, it seems as though the joyful enthusiasm that characterized the

educational moment that this student and I shared, was recaptured through numerous

cultural forces that convinced this young woman that she would grow out of the

passion she was feeling. The student notes how in order to get back into a routine I

had to put my emotions on hold. Echoing Massumi, this email illustrates how emotion

itself can represent a systematic recapture. Thus, in real ways, the system seeks to re-

appropriate lines of flight that seek to escape its totalizing grasp. My question is what is

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my role in supporting this student. Deleuze clearly provides a response in Desert

Islands and Other Texts. He states, we cant dismiss the upheavals troubling the

younger generationits difficult of course, sometimes worrisome because theyre

creating something, accompanied by the confusion and suffering that attends any

practical creation (Deleuze Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953-1974 137). The task

is philosophical in nature. To connect and conjugate the revolutions occurring within

my students as together we create new ways of thinking.

In this sense, I share this students concerns and feelings of angst. A critical

reading of this email reveals the failure to establish a productive solidarity between this

student and myself. In one sense, this correspondence depicts the tenuous danger in

the shock to thought. As indicated, the shock inevitably promotes feelings of guilt,

isolation, anger, futility and a sense of being lost. This highlights the responsibility,

accountability and caution that are required as the teacher relates to their students.

More importantly this reflection reveals that a critical stage of the Deleuzian pedagogical

project becomes how to sustain affect so that a collectively mobilized classroom can

compose well-formulated problems that get the solutions they deserve. In broader terms,

to continue the lines of flight initiated by the shock to thought the educational project

must be mutual in scope, aimed at accountability and action. In Difference and

Repetition, Deleuze argues that the best teachers can do is invite their students to

participate with them in an activity rather then to simply show them what to do or how to

do it (Bogue 337). Highlighting this point, Deleuze states, our only teachers are those

who tell us to do with me. From the perspective of the teacher ones expressivity of

behaviour becomes a focal point. Personal integrity, nomadic practice and personal

style play a role in promoting affectivity and mobilizing effective acts. Like philosophy,

continuing lines of flight in a pedagogical sense implies the pursuit of something new

and creative.

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If I am serious about continuing lines of flight like this, my role becomes linking

projects and sustaining solidarity. In a very provocative article, Independent J ournalist

Andrea Schmidt makes the critical observation that the failure of many activist projects

lay in the fact that they repeat colonial patterns. As discussed, teachers to repeat

colonial patterns. Exploring the role of activist reporting, Schmidt argues autonomous

media [must] aspire to be open, horizontal to promote the participation of the audience

and the voice it seeks to amplifyto ask the voice to frame the questions they would like

to respond to (Schmidt 86). In the same way a productive solidarity between teacher

and student requires a similar approach. It requires a change in relations that enable

both teacher and student to escape shamefully determined ways of being to work

towards a mutual expression of the problems faced together. The building of strong,

dynamic educational solidarity requires the slow building of long term relationships that

privileges a multi-directional flow of affect (Schmidt 85-86). Again to apply Schmidts

media analysis to a pedagogical approach, each assignment, activity and project can be

an opportunity to strengthen the classroom solidarity (Schmidt 86).4 Schmidts critical

reflection demonstrates how the three kinds of work outlined in a Deleuzian pedagogy

are interrelated. As Massumi argues the causes insist effects. It is clear that the project

of connection, conjunction and continuing lines of flight each insist each other in order to

produce concrete action.

Conclusion

A Deleuzian pedagogy offers a strategy to reclaim the potential of productive

relations and makes an ethical argument for struggle and action. In real ways, the

institutional violence that is consumed, recorded and reproduced by teachers determines

4As exemplified in Scott McIsaacs Free Run Children Project mentioned in the

previous section.

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a shameful way of being. Conversely, a Deleuzian pedagogy enframes the teacher as a

facilitator that joyfully connects, conjugates and continues lines of flight. It is a practice

that is rooted in solidarity. In this context, teaching and learning reveal themselves

inseparable parts if the same process. In the most holistic sense, a pedagogy of

Deleuze frames education as a collective endeavor that seeks to open up possibilities

despite the pervasive semiotization, homogenization and the transmission of various

forms of power (Guattari 109). As Guattari argues this is not only a struggle against

material bondage and visible forms of repression but also, from the outset, [must

include] the creation of many alternative set-ups (Guattari 109). Deleuze decrees the

only revolutionary is a joyful revolutionary (Deleuze Desert Islands and Other Texts,

1953-1974 250). In the same sense, the only teacher is a joyful teacher. Educators are

charged with the ethical responsibility of joyfully seeking out moments of transformation,

the change that productive education implies.

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