Should (Postsecondary) Education Seek Desubjectification?

• In Event: Multiplicities of Multiplicities: Exploring Deleuze and Guattari Across Educational Contexts

Abstract

This paper disrupts developmental discourses dominant in education. I argue that educational endeavors aimed toward subject formation, identity, and personal subjectivity may be territorializing: shutting down, restricting, and limiting lines of flight through adherence to normative structures. Such approaches to education might be termed arborescent, rather than rhizomatic (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). In seeking rhizomatic approaches to education, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) suggest we might consider the possibilities of de-subjectification. Such processes occur along the plane of consistency rather than the plane of organization, as evidenced in this quote:

The plane of consistency is the body without organs. Pure relations of speed and slowness between particles imply movements of deterritorialization, just as pure affects imply an enterprise of desubjectification. . .The plane of organization is constantly working away at the plane of consistency, always trying to plug the lines of flight, stop or interrupt the movements of deterritorialization, weigh them down, restratify them, reconstitute forms and subjects in a dimension of depth. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 270)

Some educational philosophers, such as Gert Biesta (2014) or William Pinar (2012), argue that processes of subjectification should be a primary aim of education. Working toward and achieving subjectification in educational endeavors has resulted in a proliferation of various programs, particularly in postsecondary education. Student affairs initiatives such as common reading programs, curricular programs in humanities and social sciences, general education requirements, and the invitation of guest lecturers to campus are some examples of how postsecondary educational institutions work toward expanding perspectives and achieving subjectification of students. However, all of these initiatives may actually operate along a plane of organization – arborescently reproducing what already is through adherence to normative understanding of identity and subjectivity (Davis, Suamara, & Luce-Kapler, 2008; Evans, Forney, Guido, Patton, & Renn, 2010). In other words, subjectification may actually be territorializing (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).

Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of de-subjectification raises important questions, particularly for educators working in postsecondary education. How do educational institutions, largely operating within a plane of organization, deterritorialize educational environments in order that planes of consistency might flourish? What would it mean to re-think the individual as the normative construct of measurement within educational environments? This question arises from Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the assemblage, Karen Barad’s (2008) onto-epistemological agential realism, and theories of new materialism and posthumanism (Coole & Frost, 2010; Snaza & Weaver, 2015), which all seek to re-imagine the world as becoming: as phenomena, processes, and events. De-subjectification re-asserts assembled relationships into educational processes, thereby de-emphasizing the individual as unit of measurement, if measurement can even be considered at all.

It is my contention that educators must consider these questions in relation to our practice, research, and philosophy. By drawing on examples from postsecondary education, this paper advances important questions regarding aims and approaches to educating college students. However, the philosophical underpinnings of this paper apply across the educational pipeline, and will generate new understandings about critical goals and aims of educational endeavor.

Author

• Paul William Eaton, Sam Houston State University