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This paper discusses the implications of Guattari’s concept of metamodeling, used to set up an emergent methods design, in a study on neighborhood images and urban development. Related to a theoretical background coming from Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy, metamodeling is used as a conceptual tool that enables the creation of a flexible and adaptabl...
Citations
... The parts of an assemblage may retain a certain autonomy from the whole; the parts are not necessarily determined by their positioning within the assemblage. This way of thinking relationally emphasises emergence, multiplicity and indeterminacy (Schoepher and Paisiou 2016). Furthermore, a component part of an assemblage may be detached from it and plugged into a different assemblage, in which its intra-actions are quite different. ...
The movement towards inclusion comes together with a neoliberal audit mentality whereby individuals are held responsible for the transformations. The Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) are seen as ‘change agents’ whose task it is, to support teachers in adapting their approach to optimise the chances for children with special needs in regular schools. In this paper, we want to problematise the ‘responsibility-blame discourse’ and look differently at agency. By using a diffractive methodology based on collaborative work, in which we have used material images of the workplace of the SENCO, and read-the-data-while-thinking-with-theory, we deconstruct the individualisation of agency. The SENCOs are no longer seen as separate individual humanist subjects where agency is solely lodged in the body of an individual agent [Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press] but the SENCOs are part of the intra-active entanglement of multiple agencies, of an assemblage. This re-conceptualisation of agency leads to a different approach to inclusion, in which the participants in any encounter can work as part of the assemblage to develop communities capable of re-thinking practice and transforming it into a place where children with special needs become legitimate members of the school.
... As such, we hope to illuminate the stratification of the exciting relationship between art and orthopedagogics as science. This leads to various assemblages, as we can learn from Delanda (Schoepfer and Paisiou, 2015). Assemblages are collections of heterogeneous and self-subsistent parts (human and non-human, material or non-material) that only get a meaning by being assembled in specific ways. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to search for connections rather than particularisation, for two exceptional figures: Broekaert and Platel, and to explore the intersections between science and art, art and science.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper the authors work with a bricolage of possible lines and layers in a complex web of stories associated with the life story, career and private life of Eric Broekaert and of Alain Platel.
Findings
Broekaert felt the need to look for methods which had been tested in accordance with the models of hard science. In addition, and in alternating combinations, he searched for deeper layers via etymology, history, philosophy and art. Orthopedagogics as a righteous search for a good/happy life. For Platel, the choreographer of Ballets C de la B, accepting the imperfect/unfinished/abnormal brought the world of orthopedagogics and his work with dancers closer together. The “suffering”, the “abnormal” and the fear and aversion to these, the beautiful/poetic in what is different, looking at the abnormal and wanting to be looked at … are all questions which arise and connect orthopedagogics as a science with Platel’s productions. Platel poses the question: in what world do we want to live?
Originality/value
The authors need Eric Broekaert, Alain Platel and their work as a source of inspiration and as a bridge to new, not yet enough discovered ways of looking at “difference”.
This paper engages with conversations with two teachers who each build socially just pedagogies and engage in minor gestures in response to the socio-educational-political reality they were confronted with – namely, a pupil disappearing from the classroom when her parents’ application for immigration was rejected. In an assemblage connecting the conversations to a transforming picture of an empty desk, to social media posts and online news sources and to post-qualitative literature, we reconfigure the empty desk into polyvocal, continuously moving metaphors and remain attentive to the affective and material forces of the stories that the two teachers tell. The desk functions as (1) a speaking medium and symbol of protest against the violation of children’s rights, (2) a relational force in a broken class group, (3) a part of a pedagogical space for learning democracy, and (4) a mirror on our contemporary society. These metaphors become minor gestures and invite us to fulfill our ability to respond (‘response-ability’) to the violation of rights of ‘invisible children’ and the daily realization of inclusive education for all children in class.
“Think of a city and what comes to mind?” asks Jane Jacobs (1961: 29). “Its streets. If a city’s streets look interesting, the city looks interesting; if they look dull, the city looks dull.” In our opinion, Jacobs should have answered: its commercial streets. Indeed, on Jacobs’ ideal street, small shops attract a diversity of people who use the public space and interact.
