Commencing the Rhizome: Towards a Minor Philosophy of Education

Abstract

In "The Postmodern Explained," a pedagogical sequel to "The Postmodern Condition," Jean Francois Lyotard reports on the domination of thought by the principle of realism. Lyotard speaks of a demand that threatens to totalize experience, to reduce language to Newspeak, to rob thinking of its childhood and pedagogy of its philosophical moment. It is the "demand" for reality (for unity, simplicity, communicability) and remedy: remedy for the parceling and virtualization of culture, for the fragmentation of the life world and its derealization into idioms, "petits recits," and language games. The demand is voiced most ardently by Habermas and his disciples in calling people to keep awaiting for modernity's still-incomplete project, believing in it, deriving people's visions for transformative action from it, and dedicating its achievements to it. It is this demand that marks the reception of Deleuze and Guattari's "Thousand Plateaus" as a non philosophical text, if philosophy is still understood as the discourse of reasonable argument, clarification and teaching of thought's history and future. Today the specter of this demand returns again to haunt philosophy of education. This time it is phrased not so much as a quest for combating postmodern incredulity and talking across difference in classrooms but as the reclaim of philosophy of education from its "illicit" nuptials with the social sciences. While mounting it again in the home of philosophy and establishing it as the latter's envoy, philosophers of education still want to be mediators and translators of philosophy to the cosmic world of education. This essay attempts to engage Deleuze in this conversation and investigate the possibilities of doing philosophy of education in a non-foundational way. (Contains 8 notes.)