A Minor Research and Educational Language

Abstract

A minor research and educational language is deterritorialized, political, and has collective value moving “head over heels and away.” Through taking language to its limits, to the desert, the main object is to engage not only critique and extract, hopefully creating spaces for collective subjectivity intensities, for change, and for social justice. This is thus about the beingness of engagement and ontological becomings: becoming imperceptible, becoming minor loud and clear accountable, and a pedagogy of the concept and learning. It is an honest hard toughening up allowing us to say more and other ultimately avoiding silencing and where I think we need to go.

Keywords

minor language minor research accountability political subjectivities pedagogy of the concept and learning silencing aporia Pikettytalk

Force is the other of language without which language would not be what it is.

Derrida (1978, p. 27)

What is a word in the post or in the afterward? What, when, where is a word when it seems that I am already absent? Is it worth anything? Was it? Can it be used? Could it? In a becoming machine and/of research ultimately learning, the word and a concept is minor mine and trust as is yours ours together, if we make them do. This implies a sort of “staying with the trouble” (Haraway, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1uTVnhIHS8#t=42) in a space of formal negations containing something to give. It implies entangling in joyous revolts with the transformative capacities of words creating decentered languages thus building in a willingness to confirm rather than reject insecurity, disagreements, dilemmas, and paradoxes, and thus simultaneously avoiding crippling thoughts about a need for scientific, methodological, and/or pedagogical consensus which ultimately might prevent learning . . . and change . . . justice . . . In the multiparadigmatic, post-humanist moment of (qualitative) research, insisting on the multiplicities of words, one and our subjectivities is pivotal and a recursive task. Our matter of concern (Latour, 2004) becoming that of de-authorization (Spivak, 1993) of knowledge and our words constantly both challenging and expanding on limited visions of X ultimately avoiding silencing becoming loud and clear accountable. Being/doing words and words being/doing ontology work that is, and the practicality of research.

Three years after the terror attack at our governmental building in Oslo and the youth camp at Utøya where 77 young people were killed (Reinertsen, Ryen, & Otterstad, 2013), very little is changed in Norway: “We are still silent about themes we have always been silent about” (Professor Ola Svein Stugu in Kringstad, 2014, pp. 6-7): Political extremisms . . . isms . . . and what about these so-called disturbed individuals in our societies? Leftwing rightwing interpretations . . .—preferring the one or the other explanation. And what has it to do with me? Braidotti (2013) writes,

The pursuit of collective projects aimed at affirmation of hope, rooted in the ordinary micro-practices of everyday life, is a strategy to set up, sustain and map out sustainable transformations. The motivation for the social construction of hope is grounded in a sense of responsibility and inter-generational accountability. A fundamental gratuitousness and a sense of hope is part of it. (p. 192)

I try embracing the time of Aion (Bogue, 2011).

The report after July 22 clearly showed us, however, that much needed to be changed in our country:

1) The ability to acknowledge risk and learn from rehearsals (on security measures) has been too small. 2) The ability to go through with measurements and use the plans already developed has been too weak. 3) The ability to coordinate and interact has been deficient. 4) The potentials of ICT have not been fully exploited. 5) Leaders’ ability and will to clarify responsibilities, establish goals and take measures to reach results have been inadequate. (Norges Offentlige Utredninger [NOU], 2012, p. 16)

The report continues: “In the commission’s opinion these lessons are mainly about leadership, interaction, culture and attitudes—than a lack of resources, the need for new legislation, organization or major value choices.”

On the last page, after a list however, over technical, administrative, structural, legislative, and political recommendations, and before praising the very important contribution from volunteers having done a tremendous effort in saving people’s lives, the report finishes with the following statement:

First of all there is the importance of speaking up. Crisis can be avoided or handled better if individuals express their worries or engage themselves when they discover deficiencies and defects. Instead of speaking up they become passive bystanders, even if they have valuable information and represent valuable perspectives which would increase the ability to prevent or manage a crisis situation. July 22 is namely also a story about the fact that many people knew about systems that did not work, and systems not being implemented as planned. It is often so, that in situations in which many people observe the same phenomenon, they fail to speak up. Where there are experts and authorities involved, there is an extra tendency of turning many into passive bystanders. The commission thinks that speaking up about societal risks is an important part of our individual responsibility. July 22 taught us that vigilance and engagement can play a crucial role, and that it is important that seemingly small and perhaps insignificant details or weak signals get adequate attention in time. (NOU, 2012, p. 459, Author’s translations; http://www.regjeringen.no/id/nou201220120014000dddepis)

Derrida (2001) also wrote, “Deconstruction was inscribed in the “linguistic turn,” when it was in fact a protest against linguistics!” (in Royle, 2003, p. 62).

“What July 22. 2011 will mean for us in the future is totally up to ourselves” (Associate Professor Tor Einar Fagerland, in Kringstad, 2014, pp. 6-7). Thus, the urgency, in my view, of miniscule deep language approaches creating—paradoxically, wide understandings of research and research policy making as open-ended and complex—as in rhizomatic (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) processes, and as negotiated, translated, interpreted, contested, and de-authorized knowledge—creation spaces open for more and other always . . . Possibilizing—creating—living—lives that are thought . . . The value and use of my/our words and research that is. “I speculate on a moral mass of words perhaps to come become and life” (Reinertsen, in press). Qualitative research, quantitative research, yours and mine, ours and theirs, something to give . . .—does not matter who says; it is there. This is thus about the beingness of engagement and ontological becomings: becoming imperceptible, becoming minor, and a pedagogy of the concept of research and learning. Expertise/experts not we are must be to face the future. It is a major aporia and power not, or rather science, research, methods, structures, and systems not . . .Eventually leadership not, interaction and/as intra-action, culture and attitudes again and again and again. Getting down from any pied do stall theorizing with not against. And again; what, when, where are words is evidence? It is an honest hard humble toughening up avoiding silencing to be heard; Piketty r > g talk (2014) between effects of neoliberalism and the seemingly fading importance of structural inequalities in the minds of—again but other—policy makers, and where I think we yes, yes, yes, need to go. It is yet just another paradox to learn from. No relativization, no disqualification and the “perhaps” being the most just category for the—our future (Derrida, 1997, p. 27).

Minor Languages and/as the Becoming Machines of/and Learning

We need to become the sorts of subjects who actively desire to reinvent subjectivity as a set of mutant values and to draw our pleasure from that, not from the perpetuation of familiar regimes. (Braidotti, 2013, p. 93)

The concept of minor languages draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s (1986) work on “minor literatures.” They praise James Joyce and Samuel Beckett as different but potent examples: Joyce as a rather hyperbolic type of writer whereas Beckett as a dry creating “willed poverty” (p. 19) type of writer, however, also producing affects by for example, interfering with space, time, and sound. A minor literature has three features: The language that is used is affected by deterritorialization thus stripped out of syntax losing all symbolism and signification. Furthermore, everything is political; we are as individuals all connected to a political immediacy. Last, but not least; everything has a collective value of/and/with “assemblages coming into play” (p. 27). Actualized, the way I see this, by the relational vitality and elemental complexity that mark posthuman thought itself. “Minor literatures that have been created in major languages by minorities offer great possibilities for the articulation of new political subjectivities” (Allan, 2013, p. 39). They can be used to name X and mobilize politically around them, while working to undermine the sovereign subject.

Through moving “head over heels and away” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1986, p. 26), unfolding myself onto the world, while enfolding the world within; showing the imperceptible and thinking the unthinkable, I Creole, mutate, twist and turn, and make this into working with/in minor languages and words . . . minor research . . .—seemingly small and perhaps insignificant details or weak signals . . . yours and mine and trust hopefully indirectly developing a better understanding of the manner in which the interconnectivity and mutually reinforcing nature of various “-isms” having something to do with me; my responsibility, engagement, and possible impacts. Hopeisms . . . I do not know. “Welcome to my” worldly hyperbolic crocheting coral reef word-creating meaning making thinking doing inspiraction researching events showing my ontologically polyvocal subjectivities; my “postanthropocentric embodied” brain (Braidotti, 2013, p. 104; Reinertsen, 2013). I must. And how much force . . . critique . . . is there in abstractions . . . words . . . actions? Rigor . . . Professionalism . . . Sciencing . . . I try to make them do.

They are transformations of negative to positive passions. Braidotti (2013) writes,

The linguistic signifier can at best distribute entrapment and withhold empowerment. Its sovereign power builds on the negative passions it solicits, making hungry where it most satisfies, through envy, castration and by encouraging addictive patterns of consumption of material, discursive and cultural goods. (p. 188)

Furthermore, they are the condition for creating a “becoming machine” of

radical transversal relations that generate new models of subjectivity, held in check by an ethology of forces. They sustain a vitalist ethics of mutual trans-species interdependence. It is a generalized ecology, also known as eco-sophy, which aims at crossing transversally the multiple layers of the subject, from interiority to exteriority and everything in between. (Braidotti, 2013, p. 92)

Through placing differential mechanisms of distribution of power effects at the core of subjectivity, multiple mechanisms of capture also engender multiple forms of resistance. Power formations are time-bound and consequently temporary and contingent upon social action and interaction. Something to give and/in/through joy . . . close abstractions . . . actions . . . I stay . . . I matter of concern . . . minor mine trust and yours . . . just, and just another paradox to learn from. “Movement and speed, lines of sedimentations and lines of flights are the main factors that affect the formation of a non-unitary, posthuman subject” (Braidotti, 2013, p. 189): The multiplicities of my words, one and my—our subjectivities ultimately eventually hopefully hopelessly hopist—isms . . . —the practicality of research: Getting down from—and/in Khôra theorizing with . . . thus no relativization, no disqualification, and further, de-familiarization as method always thinking differently. It is a never ending story of avoiding subjective certainty or the catastrophe of being certain. Time is also now and always.

And perhaps to remind meus: Khôra is this “place” or “topos” (Greek: area/place/Lat: locus/French: lieu) or “mid-place” (milieu) or home of all things, a platonian home, a home or place for learning and knowledge creation, a place of différance as an immense and indeterminable spatial receptacle in which the sensible likeness of the eternal paradigms are engendered, in which they are inscribed by Demiurge. (I translate that from ancient Greek as builders, all those who build/built, all those who have/had/ and do/did/make/made/perform a craft/art/trade—all of us I guess.—Hardworking.—If we are allowed to, if we allow ourselves, if we dare maybe that is. Knowledge creation in Khôra that is . . .) Because Khôra is neither intelligible nor sensible, the discourse on which can be properly situated neither as logos nor mythos, certain or probable. It is thus neither an intelligible form nor one more sensible thing, but rather, that in which sensible things are inscribed; a tabula rasa on which the Demiurge writes. Khôra possibilizes everything and anything; all. It contains an indeterminable openness and therefore signals only non-closure.—A place therefore of many ontologies. It contains a “Yes of unconditional welcome” (Derrida, 2000, p. 77) and it engages an “experience of the emancipatory promise” (Derrida, 1994, p. 59). And to make the story shorter, I use one of Derrida’s commentators: “This receptacle is like the forms inasmuch as it is already there, and hence is beyond temporal coming to be and passing away; yet it does not have the eternity of the intelligible paradigms but a certain a-chronistic a-temporality” (Caputo, 1997, p. 84).—All those who write.—All of us who write. It is there but in need of a language, a language of its own. No mediation though possible. Not between words, not between people, not within. No construction or constructivism as such. No knowledge as such. That is not what it is about, in Khôra that is. Neither about any feelings, rather about an adequate language for what it is we want/love: A practical knowledge maybe, as praxis that is, a way of knowing but differently, a way of knowing always.—A wordless form of understanding maybe, beyond any borders of time and space. A just language, a language of a friend, a true language: true to both me and you creating spaces for collective subjectivity intensities, for change, and for social justice. It is a looking for, deconstructing, and following through the text until we see “that the orthodox received, dominant interpretation has been produced by a wave of the hand that brushes aside the deviations and transgressive moments” (Caputo, 1997, p. 85). It is therefore important, it is serious, it is really something. It is a moral and a politics. It is the life . . . research . . . we live. You choose.

the receiving place is not a metaphysical category or an ontological state of being. Rather it is the possibility of permeating and displacing borders, a possibility that is restaged and kept alive through the capacity of language to disentangle signifiers from signified, narrators from native voices. The receptacle is not to be found in female nature or cultivated through attitudes of tolerance and self reflective critique. It is a place we create when in hosting others we change, hybridize our discourses and identities, and let others teach us, from the beginning, how we are different and multiple within ourselves. (Gregoriou, 2001-2002, p. 146)

Piketty r > g Talk Between and the Urgency of Living Lives That Are Thought

The posthuman nomadic subject is materialist and vitalist, embodied and embedded—it is firmly located somewhere. (Braidotti, 2013, p. 189)

This year, or rather last year in French, Thomas Piketty (2014) published his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. He presented data on increasing structural inequalities in many different countries that were powerful enough—I hope, to lead to a moral perhaps awakening. His formula r > g is showing that in the world today the return on capital (r) is larger than the—our—economic growth (g). He is also elaborating on new thoughts about how to regulate capital in the twenty-first century as to what might be a Social State and rethinking progressive income taxation. These are two institutions that must continue to play a central role in the future:

But if democracy is to regain control over the globalized financial capitalism of this century, it must also invent new tools, adapted to today’s challenges. The ideal tool would be a progressive global tax on capital, coupled with a very high level of international financial transparency. Such a tax would provide a way to avoid an endless inegalitarian spiral and to control the worrisome dynamics of global capital concentration. Whatever tools and regulations are actually decided on, need to be measured against this ideal. (Piketty, 2014, p. 515)

Mmmmmmmmmmm . . . Think about that for a while . . . r > g . . . Think with it. Think with it for you . . . research . . . I am not an economist, but I was excited. I was amazed. I was sad. I use it. There is something working, pulsating, hammering . . . Exited because here was data, qualitative, quantitative with some imperfections, I am glad, but still sufficiently reliable and valid. All in all they are irrefutable and his theories imperative. I think, for example, of the possibilities of vicious circles of increasing inequalities possibilizing that money will be buying politics will lead to more inequalities will . . . Think with it . . . Amazed that this book shows us something that cannot be denied anymore; that this extreme concentration of wealth by the elite of capitalists the last 30 years, having not led to economic growth, rather on the contrary. There are differences between countries. Scandinavia clearly have a different development that the United States, but as a world, in our world, those structures work. Sad because everything went silent very quickly drowned in discussions about research methodology and evidence and . . . methodological nationalism perhaps . . . I speculate . . . in situations in which many people observe the same phenomenon, they fail to speak up . . . I use it to discuss the possible effects of neoliberalism on culture, identity, and institutions—effects that have included audit culture, self-branding, and the subsuming of collective voices into individualistic consumer power, and at the same time the seemingly fading importance of structural inequalities in the minds of policy makers, and what it therefore has to do with me. If there is a phenomenon this might be it. Forget my/any/word however, and sniff it, inhale it, and let just the affect stay with you. That is the value of it, a gift perhaps. Qual quant mix, mashups; does not matter who says; it’s there.

Imagine a scenario in which people live lives that are not thought. When money buys politics it happens. It is a type of structural silencing. Blindspotcreation. Ontologydisappearing. Epistemologydenial. Words are not spent. Words are not created. They are not mine, not yours. Voices are gone. Thoughts and ideas and people are gone . . . —even if they have valuable information and represent valuable perspectives which would increase the ability to prevent or manage a crisis situation . . . Therefore, we have as researchers of cause worked with voicecreation for years having not however, in my view, succeeded in escaping from dichotomous thinking and ditto reactions against. Forget about the words. Let the words disappear leaving just this intensity . . . affect . . . —indignation anger revolt joy . . . gift . . . abstraction . . . beyond . . . preverbal intensities perhaps. Preverbal afterverbal I do not know. Anyway anywhere somewhere; “The focus is on the force and autonomy of affect and the logistics of its actualization” (Massumi, 2002, in Braidotti, 2013, p. 95). No moral panic or melancholia, but “fully immersed in and immanent to a network of non-human (animal, vegetable, viral) relations” (Braidotti, 2013, p. 193) always resisting, subverting, and creating spaces for multiple and collective voices, for change, and for social justice. It is a constant “researchcreation” against methods (Manning, in press). I must you. And because I love it:

Individuality in a social and moral sense is something to be wrought out. It means initiatives, inventiveness, varied resourcefulness, assumption of responsibility in choice of belief and conduct. These are not gifts but achievements. As achievements, they are not absolute but relative to the use that is to be made of them. And this use varies with the environment. (Dewey, 1957, p. 194)

Wringing it out I have tried, I try, and how it might look in practice. No expertise no experts together but a responsibility and a choice. The trouble is therefore not about defining X ideologically correct and being preoccupied with the troubles as such, but to solve them practically and again and again: Force power not.

Practicality of Research: A/My Useful Utopia Too

Just as Piketty (2014) realistically points out that a global tax on capital is a utopian idea, such constant researchcreation might be utopian too, I guess. Probably demanding too much international cooperation through too many differences? However, it is, the way I see this again, a useful and worthwhile reference measurement point and how to be heard in policy circles. Try regional cooperation, local cooperation, hyper-local cooperation with your colleagues and theories and practices. I think our own sometimes toxic work environments are counterproductive as far as research . . . creation . . ., openness and political positioning are concerned resulting in . . . silencing of important voices . . . —even if they have valuable information . . . Developing equity and/or justice focused responsive evaluation tools might be somewhere to start. I speculate on the value of democratic evaluation in contemporary society; affect/ting evaluation perhaps to come become and life. Engage in it. Ting in my language is both (a) thing and Parliament. The Vikings had their Tings where they met and decided on important measures. Today our Storting (the name of our Parliament) does the same. It is something, a thing, it, X, ting, a gift not and important. The list of research questions we could inquire into is endless and a choice. What are the costs of (not) doing/doing other, to whom when? Affecting research, r > g resistanceresearch; sniff it inhale it and let it stay with you. Not-, inter-, intra- again and again. Minor major mine must . . .

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Anne Beate Reinertsen is a professor at Queen Maud University College Early Childhood Education. She is preoccupied with practical philosophy of education issues, subjective professionalism, and post-constructivist qualitative research methodologies.

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