Deleuze and Education

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) provides an integrated theorization of learning without having written specifically on education. He was a philosopher who worked for the majority of his life as an intellectual and university academic. Deleuze was propelled into the public eye in 1972, after the success of his first collaborative work with Félix Guattari, called Anti-Oedipus. He did not write a book on learning, so one must piece together his ideas on learning from comments interspersed from within the oeuvre. Despite this apparent lack of direct information and analysis of learning, Deleuze’s ideas have gained traction in many educational and creative circles (Cole 2011).

2011

H-Childhood, H-Net Reviews, 2013

EEPAT: Encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory

Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy has an enormous potential for educational theory, pedagogical practice, and educational research methods and policy. The questions asked by Deleuze (and Deleuze & Guattari in their combined works) address such important for education areas as human subjectivity, experience, logic, language, ethics, creativity, and desire. Deleuze’s philosophy is pragmatic and has a surprising affinity with Dewey’s educational philosophy with its attention to problematic situations and learning from experience. Deleuze’s is the pedagogy of concepts: practical, experimental pedagogy oriented to focusing on problems that defy univocal solutions but represent experimentation with the world and ourselves leading to the creation of new meanings and values. Deleuze’s philosophy defies static “being” in lieu of dynamic “becoming” made possible by relations and connections. Rational thought is complemented by non-thought, or unthought and affective, dimension. Philosophical thinking demands the creation of the new. It has strong political implications, reflecting Deleuze’s ontology of the virtual, and as such is future oriented, addressing the people yet to come. Education as inspired by Deleuze’s philosophy is untimely: it can transcend the physical present and allows us to envisage multiple opportunities in the open future.

Policy Futures in Education, 2011

Sanders' paper is followed by the article written by Manuel Zahn and titled '"Pedagogy of Perception": notes on Film-Bildung with Deleuze'. Zahn's approach is relational and focused on the complex relations between the film and its spectator, listener or 'reader', comprising a film perception. He notes that there are three different traditions of Bildung currently discussed (implicitly and explicitly) in the political debate on educational reforms in Germany. Problematizing traditional approaches, Zahn develops a concept of Bildung as informed by Deleuze's philosophy and one that is able to reflect on individuation as becoming of a complex assemblage of heterogeneous elements or images. Zahn is adamant that there are strong educational implications arising from considering Film-Bildung. By making the viewers follow the movements and the processes of becoming, film also makes them sensitive to the restrictions

The work of Deleuze and his associates has been widely discussed, and there is a burgeoning literature on the political implications for the education system specifically. Examples in Sweden, the UK and the USA are discussed. Deleuzian writing offers a powerful critique of educational bureaucracies, but the work also highlights problems in connecting work with a definite philosophical agenda to critical and political analyses of empirical processes and situations. Deleuze’s philosophical agenda leads to radical but also to highly unconventional thinking and writing and this makes the argument notoriously inaccessible. Some general paradoxes in linking theory to practice emerge through Rancière’s discussion of philosophical autonomy and heteronomy. The work of Bourdieu in particular can also help to explain the difficulties of Deleuzian writing in terms of possible residual effects of a particular social context – the elite French university system of the 1960s and 1970s which fostered a particularly allusive style.

This interview, conducted over the span of several months, tracks the respective journeys of Constantin V. Boundas and Daniel W. Smith with the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. Rather than "becoming Deleuzian," which is neither desirable nor possible, these exchanges initial discoveries of Deleuze's writings by Boundas and Smith, inperson meetings between Boundas and Deleuze, and the widecepts produced by both Boundas and Smith. At stake in this discussion are key contributions by Deleuze to continental philosophy, including the distinction between the virtual and the actual and the very nature of a "concept." Also at stake is the formative or pedagogical impact of a philosopher, like Deleuze, on those who engage with his texts, concepts, and project. Cette interview, menée sur plusieurs mois, suit les parcours respectifs de Constantin V. Boundas et Daniel W. Smith avec la philosophie de Gilles Deleuze. Au lieu de « devenir Deleuzien, » ce qui n'est ni vertes des écrits de Deleuze par Boundas et Smith, des rencontres en personne entre Boundas et Deleuze, et du travail philosophique Smith. L'enjeu ici étant les contributions clés de Deleuze à la philosophie continentale, y compris la distinction entre le virtuel et l'actuel, et la nature même d'un « concept. » Mais il y a aussi l'impact formateur ou pédagogique d'un philosophe, comme Deleuze, sur ceux qui trouvent et s'engagent pleinement dans ses textes, ses concepts et ses projets.

The Cambridge Companion to Deleuze, 2012

I was taught by two professors, whom I liked and admired a lot: Alquie and Hyppolite .... The former had long white hands and a stammer which might have been a legacy of his childhood, or there to hide a native accent, and which was harnessed to the service of Cartesian dualisms. The lat•• ter had a powerful face with unfinished features, and rhythmically beat out Hegelian triads with his fist, hanging his words on the beats. At the Liberation, we were still strangely stuck in the history of philosophy. We