Notes on:
Zembylas, M. (2007)' The specters of bodies and
affects in the classroom: a rhizo-ethological
approach'. Pedagogy, Culture and Society
15(1): 19--35
Dave Harris
We need to redefine bodies as intensities and
energies, and discuss the role of affects.
Then go and apply this to emotional intelligence
and emotion management. Bodies are sometimes seen
as visible and at other times as specters [a bit
of Derrida
creeps in here?]. Affects include 'desire,
pleasure, joy and even anger'(19) [the
conventional emotions in other words]
Bodies and affects tend to be ignored in education
in favour of the pursuit of knowledge.
Bodies are hidden or contained. However,
knowledge itself 'is always felt and responded to
emotionally and corporeally' (20). There
have been lots of critiques on the tendency to
ignore bodies and affects, and Cartesian dualism
is often blamed. Bodies have to be regulated
so that teachers should not touched unions, eye
contact should be maintained, anger should not be
expressed. Any affective connections between
teachers and students is a matter for discomfort,
and teachers have to control themselves. Bodies
and affects are not simply elements of
discourse. Merleau-Ponty among others, has
insisted that the self is integral, and includes a
material body. Jameson has argued for a
waning of affect. However, 'post
structuralism is directly concerned with affects
and bodies'.
Merleau-Ponty suggests that life should be seen as
meaningful, sensuous, engaged human praxis,
necessarily intersubjective. Emotions are
simply 'specific modes of meaningful behaviour',
something embodied and shared. Consciousness
operates 'in and through our bodies', so the body
is '"a natural self, and, as it were, the subject
of perception"'. There is no boundary
between inside and outside. Emotions are
part of our existence, connected to the world
because embodiment is integral to our
understanding, emotions are manifest in
communication [a lot of references here to
Crossley]. The subject ceases to be
something individualised or exclusively
rational. However, emotional responses are
managed and regulated as well.
Postmodernism, which includes Foucault here, talk
about the importance of discourses to the
experience of the body, so that the body itself is
a discursive construction. Descriptions of
bodies or affects are themselves discursive in
this sense.
Foucault describes how the body is
disciplined, how external regulation become self
regulation. Events are inscribed on the
surface of the body, leading to Butler
on performativity as a process of
constructing identity from a 'multiplicity of
performances' (22), as with gender identities [a
rather external reading here, where performativity
is inscribed].
Similarly, affects are carefully regulated and
controlled by specific discourses and
knowledges. However, this has dematerialized
the body for critics, omitting corporeal
realities. Nevertheless, not all
postmodernist accounts deny the body, although
some want to see bodies as a result of connections
between forces and energies. This is what
Deleuze gets from Spinoza [according to Rose],
leading to the need for specific analyses.
This is what should happen in education, to see
what bodies and affects can actually do, and not
just in sexual terms. Deleuze revitalizes
the potential of bodies.
The body is seen as 'a dynamic and interconnected
whole', constructed by speed and rest. A
body is always in a process of becoming, 'and thus
is an endless multiplicity' (24), defined by
longitude and latitude, a total of intensive
affects and so on, an assemblage of relations of
movement and rest and capacities. An
assemblage is a site where discourses relate to
material practices [says Crary], and bodily
assemblages can be both machinic and
enunciating. The capacity to affect and be
affected is crucial [which is how we define what a
body can do in Spinozan terms]. Bodily
assemblages have various non human dimensions,
including the senses, and bodies can either extend
or prevent connections. The concept of
rhizome is crucial here, as is the body without
organs: 'any organized structure such as the
government, a body and the universe [seen as]
multiple and as always engaged with other bodies'
(24).
This makes possible a politics of becoming,
according to Braidotti, and a new conception of
the female body for Grosz (see my discussion of
Deleuze and feminist politics) , something which
is not just regulated and ordered, but 'the sight
of free flowing desire and creativity'. It
produces schizophrenic subjects resisting
categorization.
Deleuze has borrowed Spinoza
to define bodies as intensities and energies, as
productive of 'affective and embodied
connections'. Teaching and learning can be
seen as 'as a plane for the production of intense
affects'. We see effects in terms of how
some taught bodies become visible, and others
spectral. Deleuzian ideas can help suggest
'improbable affective and bodily connections', and
how affects lead to 'platforms for social
solidarity and the understanding of
differences'(21). [this will require a bit
of stretching of Deleuze! We'll have to ignore a
lot of the ontology I suspect].
Deleuze [? Via Spinoza] has developed an overall
ethology of bodies, their speed and slowness,
their capacities for affecting and being
affected. Others [someone called Gatens]
have talked about the relations of bodies with
assemblages, including their nonhuman
elements. As with Spinoza, relations can
bring joy or sadness, but this can't be known in
advance. This raises questions for
educators, like why the same material produces
different assemblages—the pedagogical body is
conceived too simply. In practice, it is far
more complex, with lots of small elements
affecting connections' and relations, from facial
expressions to body movements. Many of the
connections and assemblages are unexpected.
In his commentaries on Spinozan, two aspects of
affect are distinguished by Deleuze—affect and
affection. These do not denote 'a personal
feeling' according to Massumi, but relates the
ability to affect and be affected, and the status
of the affected body respectively. In
particular an affection is an idea, 'an organic
impression upon the body', while an affect is the
link between states of affairs, both process and
product. The two are not actually separable,
but both are different from feeling.
Capacities of bodies are seen in encounters with
other bodies. Here affect becomes 'not just
a feeling or an emotion but a force' (26).
New modes of subjectivation can emerge [as usual,
these are assumed to be more creative than the
standard notions]. Deleuze actually 'rarely
speaks of "emotion"', and Massumi insists that
affect and emotion followed different
logics. While emotion appears as a
conventional insertion of intensity, 'affect can
not be captured in semantics — Massumi says it's
relatively autonomous, not confined to particular
bodies: emotion represents the most intense
'capture' of affect [by language or
consciousness]. We can see this as arguing
that emotion relates to the mind, but affect to
the body, and that the latter produces the former.
Massumi also says that emotions are conventional
as is subjectivity, while affects can escape
through lines of flight, that are unpredictable,
and involve becoming.
Boler has discussed this argument, and suggests
that 'emotion in practice' breaks this
distinction, insisting that emotions are always
inscribed in habit, including habitual
inattention. However, we can preserve the
idea that affects are open, 'directed outwards'
(27) and this explains their potential to produce
new assemblages [the actual text says these are
radically new assemblages, but this could be a bit
misleading if we go back to Spinoza? The new
assemblages are confined to different levels of
the spiritual automaton? The final level of
complex interconnections helps us philosophize,
not practice radical politics?].
Deleuze also talks about desire as movement,
relation and encounters [something deeper than
that, surely?]. It does not demonstrate the
lack, but a process. 'It is affect...
event... an autonomous and productive force
constitutive of the social field rather than being
constituted by it' [lots of arguments rolled
together here? Some missed out too,
including desiring machines]. Desire
'implies' rhizomes and BWOs. It is always
productive, and this leads to Deleuze supporting
the creation of new assemblages of bodies, a
different emphasis from 'the phenomenological
search for meaning' [desire is so vague and
general, that it underpins all and every kind of
meaning? Desiring machines supply specific
meanings through investment].
There is a danger of developing too romantic and
idea of becoming and new assemblages, and divert
attention from more conventional politics.
Nevertheless we get an outline of possible lines
of resistance, and a discussion of the potential
freedom 'that someone possesses in becoming active
and selecting one's relation with the
others'[misleading again, in my view—we do this if
we want to be a philosopher]. Affect helps
us escape 'confinement in a particular
body'. This makes Deleuze politicized in
Massumi's terms [much contested, for example by Badiou or Zizek].
As educational implications, we can see a
corporeal basis for 'immanent forces that produce
creativity, and novelty and change' (28).
Bodies and affects will be central to pedagogy,
not what they are but what they do, what
connections they permit [but is this not simply a
fancy reworking of the idea that we set up an
environment that influences the thought of our
students?]. The point is that bodies and
affects permit 'passionate educational exploration
not yet colonised in the economies of mind'
[citing Boler]. The potential raises a
'possibility of transgression', breaking
boundaries, challenging attempts to contain
corporeality. Thus 'new assemblages arise in
the classroom' [must do? Will do with a
suitable pedagogy? These will always be
constructive creative and educational
assemblages?]
Current educational discourses stress the tensions
between pleasure and risk, especially in
discussions of emotion management or emotional
intelligence. At present, these discourses
are conservative, dividing the rational and the
emotional and reinforcing existing power
hierarchies and stereotypes. They want to
contain emotions. This in individuals or
passive and helpless, that emotions contaminate
reason, that bodies breakdown when they encounter
the intense emotional experiences. The whole
discourse is about containing risks of expressing
emotional behaviour. Emotional intelligence
supports this new morality and is associated with
the shift towards measurable skills and
efficiency. It often assumes that moral
behaviour is hardwired in the brain, and that the
best students simply capitalize on their
wiring. Emotional intelligence 'becomes
a "technology" of schooling', another
disciplinary technology (29), so that the
emotionally intelligent avoid unacceptable
emotional behaviour. A harmonious and
tranquil self is supposed to result, and this lies
behind the call for '"emotional literacy skills"':
but these usually still imply a binary opposition
between rationality and affectivity, and involves
self-policing of affects and desire [affect here
becomes conventional emotions after all?]
We think of affects and bodies as assemblages, of
connections as dynamic, and of bodies as material
in their own right, we move beyond just seeing
language as primary. The Deleuzian notion of
affect 'goes beyond discourse'. But at the
same time, students' and teachers' stories and
narratives can have an important pedagogical role,
but only because we can see narratives as '"a
bodily reality"' (30) [what a weasel]. Other
commentators have agreed, even though they are
using phenomenology. They understand
teaching is holistic, and note that 'teachers
assume different body positions' which can be
described in terms of longitude and latitudes
[hardly!]. We can see body positions as
assemblages, and 'teaching and learning as an
extension of forces and intensities'[so we are
choosing to see it this way because we like
Deleuze, in this article anyway?]. We want
teachers and learners to enact 'passion and desire
for new body assemblages'.
We could recognize the potential of affect even
though connections 'are not inevitably
emancipatory'. This will help us see
possibilities and limitations when we discuss
social solidarity and the understanding of
differences or injustices. Affects 'like
anger'[!] can be constructive. Affective
connections can lead to demands for respect and
recognition and highlight inequalities. [If
all these nice things happen] creating affective
connections 'is an act of ethical and political
practice'.
Of course, becoming, desires, and their pleasures
and risks are unavoidable. And we need not
repress them but to ask in which direction they
are leading, to what extent they are anchored in
the bourgeois subject, what new possibilities are
opened. The alternative is to have to deny
the importance of passion and desire, and to opt
for blandness [silly]. Embodied and active
pedagogy is both a process and a product. If
teachers generate affects, this can help students
realise how affects are grounded in their
corporeality, as when teachers or texts produce
goose bumps [also mentioned by Olsson].
We can ask students through activities to show how
bodily understanding is linked to their identity,
developing 'understandings of the bodies such as
compassion, caring, listening and feeling together
of self and other'[citing Elbaz-Luwisch].
Zembylas uses another strategy, asking students to
'analyse how selective vision and affective/bodily
attention constitute particular subjectivities',
or by analysing pedagogical bodies and displays,
to interrupt them. We also need to
reconsider the curriculum and culture of schools,
recognising the role of the body as an agent,
bodies that work and transform themselves [he
admits that touching and hugging have become
seriously problematic]. Emphasising desire,
passion and the body facilitate expressive
teaching and learning. The curriculum should
put 'the body at the centre of teaching and
learning, enhancing opportunities for emotional
and body expression'. [Then a pathetic
attempt to return to Deleuze] bodily movement and
'expression of others' affects become part of
oneself'.
We have seen from Deleuze that bodies are dynamic,
and have capacities to affect and be
affected. We can apply this to classrooms by
thinking of bodies as 'a nexus of multiplicities
interconnecting with others' (32) [blimey! A
multiplicity of multiplicities!]. This will
open new possibilities in 'a Deleuzian
rhizo-ethological approach'. We can analyze
bodies, their speeds and slowness, and see
practices as nodes. [Confusing the
actualised with the virtual again, unless he means
philosophically analyze—the actual quotes suggests
we '"watch bodies carefully"', and the text goes
on to say that 'the classroom strikingly reveals
{empirically?} bodies that engage in different
assemblages', including 'the gender assemblage'].
Embodied pedagogies challenge the conventional
roles of the body and provide multiple
opportunities 'and enact passionate and embodied
forms of teaching and learning'. Researchers
should also attend to the body, and consider their
methods. However, the point is to develop
'the idea of a rhizo-ethological approach' [and
then stand back]. Not all questions are
answered, but we might at least 'begin to invent
new connections of bodies and affects in the
classroom'.
A note says that he wants to preserve the
difference between affects and emotion to share
the philosophical meaning developed by Deleuze —
but I think the actual discussion shows slippage.
References include a contribution by Boler to a
symposium on Deleuze, Perth, December 1996.
The Crossley referred to is an article in Body
and Society, 1995, 1(1): 43--66. Both
Deleuze's books on Spinoza are cited, together
with the Capitalism and Schizophrenia couple.
Elbaz-Luwisch has an article in Curriculum
Inquiry (2004), 34: 9-27. The Massumi
is not the introduction to 1000 Plateaus,
but an article in Patton's Deleuze's reader.
There is a reference to a forthcoming Zembylas on
Deleuze and Guattari in British Educational
Research Journal.
back to Zembylas page
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