Education and the Politics of Becoming

This collection examines education in the light of a politics of becoming. It takes a non-hierarchical transdisciplinary approach, challenging the macropolitics of pre-established governmental and economic agendas for education. Drawing on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the contributors consider questions such as how education might engage a politics of becoming, and how education and becoming function in a society of control. Since Deleuze and Guattari contend that a society is defined by its becomings, its transformations, this collection asks how education, itself a process in becoming, may contribute "collective creations" to a society in continual flux.

The chapters bring theory and praxis together, deploying power, affect, cartography, space, relationality, assemblage and multiple literacies in order to experiment with music, art, language, teacher education, curriculum and policy studies. This collection is an innovative resource, creating an encounter with the macropolitics of education, and altering teaching, learning, evaluation and curriculum.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.

Diana Masny is Professor Emerita and founding member of the Multiple Literacies Research Unit at the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, Canada. She is also Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She developed MLT (Multiple Literacies Theory) a transdisciplinary lens to study mainly, but not exclusively, early childhood education, education and Deluze, immigration, citizenship and minority language education. She has co-authored Mapping Multiple Literacies: An introduction to Deleuzian Literacy Studies (2012), has edited Cartographies of becoming in Education: A Deleuze-Guattari perspective (2013) and co-edited Deleuze and Education (2013).

David R Cole is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He is a trained philosopher and educational thinker, concerned with opening up new modes of thought. David researches and writes in a multidisciplinary manner, harnessing, impacting and motivating ideas to move away from subjugation to any one modality or form of containment. So far, this approach has yielded eight books (including a novel called A Mushroom of Glass) and numerous articles, book chapters, research grants and presentations. David’s latest monograph is called: Educational Life-forms: Deleuzian Teaching and Learning Practice.