:In this essay I begin with Foucault's theorization of the convulsive body of the possessed as a site of struggle. Next, I amend this perspective with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's notion that “the concept is not object but territory” 101). That is, rather than looking at convulsive bodies as objects through which actors struggle, I approach convulsions as evidencing acts of territorialization. Instead of a corporeal object over which actors struggle for ownership, this perspective reframes convulsions as a process (...) of space-making that is constitutive of the space-makers. Amending Foucault's take on convulsions with Deleuze and Guattari's notion of territory allows for analysis of “techno-horror” popular entertainments as constitutive processes in the unfolding of new reproductive masculine subjectivities. (shrink)

Prompted by what is seen as a missing analysis in the discussions about passion and affect in education, this essay attempts to clarify and provide a context for understanding the contribution of Foucault in the discourse of passion. In particular, the author traces the politics of passion in Foucault's work. A ‘politics of passion’ is the analysis that challenges the cultural and historical emotional rules with respect to what passion is, how it is expressed, who gets to express it and (...) under what circumstances. It is argued that a discussion of Foucault's ideas on passion provides a way of sharpening and clarifying his politics on affect, particularly what is relevant to individual and collective emotional control in education. (shrink)

Educational philosophy in English-speaking countries tends to be informed mainly by analytic philosophy common to Western thinking. A welcome alternative is provided by pragmatism in the tradition of Peirce, James and Dewey. Still, the habit of the so-called linguistic turn has a firm grip in terms of analytic philosophy based on the logic of non-contradiction as the excluded middle. A body∼mind approach pertains to the edusemiotic turn that this article elucidates. Importantly, semiotics is not illogical but is informed by the (...) paradoxical logic of the included middle. The process of reasoning is however indirect or mediated; it involves active interpretation (in a variety of forms) versus direct representation; it is analogical and connects what are otherwise doomed to remain isolated substances of body versus mind with a separation of knowledge and action. Analysing and synthesising the philosophies of Charles Sanders Peirce and Gilles Deleuze, together with a brief excursion into the cutting-edge science of coordination dynamics, this article will demonstrate how the body∼mind assemblage is created in practice, and what may be the implications of such a stance for educational philosophy and pedagogical practice. (shrink)

In this article I will investigate a perceived tension in Swedish early childhood education (ECE) policy between reevaluating certain foundational claims on the one hand and following universal moral commands on the other. I ask the question; how is it that certain commonly held assumptions are being debunked and others left undisturbed in this particular context? To this end, I look at some of the preconditions of framing the educational practice by universal moral commands so as to make visible some (...) of its underlying ontological assumptions. Correspondingly, I look at some necessary epistemological and ontological prerequisites for understanding knowledge formation as essentially relational, such as it is construed in the policy documents concerned. I connect this with a broader trend in educational philosophy and theory, one where the destabilizing of a Cartesian notion of subjectivity has opened up for more relational conceptions of subjectivity. Next, I will take a closer look at some key passages from the policy documents where the appeal to moral universalism runs parallel with an appeal to a relational ontology. Having done so, I point to some epistemological problems with combining these two conflicting approaches on a policy level. To conclude, I formulate some final thoughts regarding how one might begin to resolve this tension within the discourse of Swedish ECE by coming to terms with what kind of ontological and epistemological foundation to rely upon. I do this by trying out the notion of a pedagogy of dosage. (shrink)

This essay juxtaposes concepts created by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari with worlds imagined by Ursula Le Guin in a performance of ‘rhizosemiotic play’ that explores some possible ways of generating and sustaining what William Pinar calls ‘complicated conversation’ within the regime of signs that constitutes an increasingly internationalized curriculum field. Deleuze and Guattari analyze thinking as flows or movements across space. They argue, for example, that every mode of intellectual inquiry needs to account for the plane of immanence upon (...) which it operates—the preconceptual field presupposed by the concepts that inquiry creates. Curriculum inquiry currently operates on numerous nationally distinctive planes of immanence. I argue that the internationalization of curriculum studies should not presume a singular transnational plane of immanence but, rather, envisage a process performed by curriculum scholars with the capacities and competencies to change planes—to move between one plane of immanence and another and/or to transform their own planes. My essay is a ‘narrative experiment’ that takes seriously Deleuze’s argument that a work of philosophy should be, in part, a kind of science fiction, and also takes inspiration from Le Guin’s science fictional stories of ‘changing planes’ to generate productive and disruptive transnational agendas in curriculum inquiry. (shrink)

Prompted by what is seen as a missing analysis in the discussions about passion and affect in education, this essay attempts to clarify and provide a context for understanding the contribution of Foucault in the discourse of passion. In particular, the author traces the politics of passion in Foucault's work. A ‘politics of passion’ is the analysis that challenges the cultural and historical emotional rules with respect to what passion is, how it is expressed, who gets to express it and (...) under what circumstances. It is argued that a discussion of Foucault's ideas on passion provides a way of sharpening and clarifying his politics on affect, particularly what is relevant to individual and collective emotional control in education. (shrink)