Philosophical reimaginings of educational places and policy: Through the metaphor of a wardrobe

Boundaries and infinities of a wardrobe or an educational place

As humans, we have presumptions about different things and phenomena, for example what a place or a room is, or maybe what a wardrobe is. For example, (almost) no one questions that a wardrobe contains clothes, shoes, hats and maybe a mirror. This is taken for granted. However, Merleau-Ponty stresses that presumptions need to be interrogated through a critical self-reflection that interrogates its own possibility, what he describes as ‘hyper-reflection’ (Merleau-Ponty and Lefort, 1968: 38).

On an ontological level we can question what a room is and can be, and there are various ways of understanding a room: be it a wardrobe or a (class)room. One way to understand a room is that it is constrained and defined by its walls. Although the students in a (class)room, or children in a wardrobe, are restrained by four walls, the horizon of the room can be expanded. Another way to understand a (class)room is therefore as an educational space when the learning is taking place beyond the four walls of the physical (class)room. This could be, for example, an outdoor setting, or web-based learning, and in these cases the horizon of the (class)room becomes unlimited in different ways: the boundaries of the room become a kind of infinite infinity. However, these places are not free from boundaries, due to the organisation of the education and the place (Alerby et al., 2014).

The room, be it a wardrobe or a (class)room, as a spatial formation, is the most general form in the world, according to Bollnow (1994), and for him tightness and space stretch beyond the objective room. As humans, we are always situated somewhere: in time and space. At the same time, we can either distance ourselves from the room or establish ourselves in it. We can feel lost and foreign in the room, or safe and in harmony with the room. Given this, a human being is not only situated in a place: the presence in a place is also followed by a certain attitude of mind, and the room affects different people in different ways.

Different people also experience, interpret and use the formation of a room in different ways. A room can be described in terms of geometrical or physical dimensions, but this is not enough. Instead the room must, according to Merleau-Ponty (2002), be described through the human experience: ‘Space is not the setting (real or logical) in which things are arranged, but the means whereby the position of things becomes possible’ (284).

In Professor Kirke’s wardrobe many things become possible for the Pevensie children. Through the room of the wardrobe the children enter the magic land of Narnia. What possibilities do students in general have to enter the magic land of education, and to become kings or queens of their own universe of learning? Perhaps students are also just escaping from the horror of some form of battle or war? Students experience many diverse possibilities during their time in educational settings. At the same time, they can also experience many challenges and limitations, for example in connection to regulations and policies. To some extent, they are controlled by teachers, but also by the physical (class)room. However, the students, can in most cases, only be controlled or restrained bodily by the teacher and the room, not mentally or emotionally (Alerby et al., 2014). The windows of a (class)room can for example be an opening, like in Professor Kirke’s wardrobe, where the students can mentally flee the room: a window may make the room infinite as the horizon extends outwards by looking through it.

Maybe the students might look out on a ‘lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains’ (Lewis, 1956: 154), especially if the teacher does not succeed to engage the students in the learning situation. Given this, a room’s openings, for example windows in a (class)room, or maybe mirrors in a wardrobe, can for some people in some situations be experienced as a threat or as contesting the teacher and the learning situation. They can also, however, be regarded as stimulating openings of creative possibilities for learning. Thus, stretching the educational room to the infinite does not necessarily have to be considered as a mental escape from the learning situation. It can also be regarded as a way to return to, and contemplate, what has just been done or discussed. Students might also relate to another dimension of humans’ presence or being in a room, through their bodies moving within the room. In accordance with Merleau-Ponty (2002):

a movement is learned when the body has understood it, that is, when it has incorporated it into its ‘world’, and to move one’s body is to aim at things through it; it is to allow oneself to respond to their call, which is made upon it independently of any representation (160–161).

As a consequence of this reasoning, the humans in the room (the Pevensie children or children, students and teachers in educational settings), the room itself, the things, the encounters and the activities within the room, become entanglements of bodies and the world: different dimensions of spatiality and embodiment. Merleau-Ponty and Lefort (1968) articulate this as the ‘flesh of the world’ (248). They also argue that different relationships encroach upon each other in a cross-over, a chiasm, which is presented as an ambiguity without opposites. The concept of chiasm is discussed by Westman and Alerby (2012) in terms of ‘a chiasmic be(com)ing’ (357) in relation to temporality in education. Since time and space are closely connected to humans’ lived experiences, chiasm is a relevant concept for spatiality as well. A chiasmic be(com)ing houses a deep and complex feeling of presence and belonging, still in a process of change, sliding between the dimensions of temporality and spatiality, as the Pevensie children too are sliding in time and space.

Accordingly, we argue that it is important to reconsider the existential dimensions of educational spaces and places. The concept of chiasm may be a fruitful way to overcome binary approaches and expand the discussion of educational spaces and places and their role for children’s and students’ learning. In addition, we find it crucial for educational policies to (re)consider existential dimensions of/in educational places and how these enhance or limit students’ learning and chiasmic be(com)ing.

Foreigners and revolt in a wardrobe or at educational places

In this turn, our argument can be further strengthened through Kristeva’s work. First we utilise her conceptions of the foreigner, to develop the positioning of students, like the Pevensie children, through Kristeva’s (1991) foreigner lens. The Pevensie children, led by Lucy, move between spaces and places, their parallel universes, where they might be seen as neither really here, but also not really there. They hover in-between. They are in-between linguistic, cultural, and temporal spaces and places: influenced perhaps by both, and perhaps by neither, at any given moment. Through Kristeva’s (1991) development of the notion of being the foreigner, she alerts us to the possibility of simultaneously feeling elated, high on the exhilaration of the adventure of tearing away, and being depressed from the sheer and utter struggles faced in the process. While on the one hand the foreigner may love his or her home, or place of origin, and the comfort of the known culture, this is impacted by wider considerations. For the Pevensie children the disquieting effect of the war alters the realities of their home, and probably also the ways in which they perceive and experience Narnia, the escape, the magic, the reprieve.

In 21^st century educational settings, to conceptualise children or students as foreigners captures the immense influences of the increasingly globalised educational imperatives and intercultural and social justice challenges that might arise (Besley and Peters, 2011, 2012; Bloch et al., 2014). Students entangled in multiple cultures, for example, both bring and deal with the diverse languages and ways of being that emanate from their multiple respective histories, as do Kristeva’s (1991) foreigners, and the Pevensie children, in-between Narnia and their everyday lives. Sometimes they act within their educational place with confidence, being open and expressive in their linguistic and dialogic encounters, for example, while at other times they react with worry, or confusion, appearing then shy, disengaged or withdrawn.

Children’s, students’ and teachers’ experiences of linguistic or cultural otherness impact on and are impacted by their educational settings and experiences. Kristeva’s (1998) theorisations are useful to understand this idea in complex ways, as she sees subjects as always in process. An individuals’ identity, she says, is ‘constantly in question, … open and evolving’ (Kristeva, 2008: 2). Subjects evolve in diverse ways, according to Kristeva’s theory, including through what she calls the semiotic, by which she refers to inner, often unconscious, reactions or responses to the structural surroundings. Metaphorically, we can again see students’ possible inner reactions to their educational spaces and places represented in the Pevensie children’s various responses to the fear, enticement, dread and assurances found in their ‘through the wardrobe’ experiences in Narnia. Subjects’ constant evolution also occurs through notions such as love, or empathy, and expulsion, or what Kristeva calls the abject, or abjection. These possibilities offer opportunities for complex articulations of the influences of responses and senses in relation to educational experiences. Finally, subjects also evolve through the necessary notion of revolt, according to Kristeva (2002). Through a Kristevan perspective revolt calls for a constant and critical questioning of the status quo. Student subjects, as constantly in process, therefore ‘call themselves constantly into question’ (Stone, 2004: 124), making meaning of their situation in their physical and emotional space and place, developing their sense of ethics, love and the abject, through their experiences.

In an extension of the critical questioning by subjects in process, we argue that revolt also involves calling into question the spaces and places themselves. Perhaps then educational settings too are in a constant process of construction, open and evolving, like the student/teacher subjects? And perhaps evolving educational settings also develop through the same elements as the subjects, the students, teachers, managers or administrators in the early childhood, school or tertiary setting? How might such a shift in conceptions implicate particular learning environments? What if they were conceived, at one time, as a delineated space, as is the wardrobe, with walls, doors, a floor and a roof, operating by particular rules and common understandings of how they are used, and then, as they evolve, such conceptions change, but not at predetermined times, just as the children could not predetermine when the wardrobe would change, or what kind of a wardrobe they would find at any given time, an ordinary standard wardrobe or a transformational one. If the back of the wardrobe represents the structures of an educational setting, an early childhood centre, for example, or a university, then maybe those structures too can be seen as penetrable entry points, as transformational spaces, that operate instead of by predetermined, fixed rules, by unfamiliar rules, entangling the educational place in uncertainty, instead. Kristeva’s lens lends, again, rather than a particular solution, a framework for ongoing questioning, also evoking our own responses to educational spaces and places, as lecturers, researchers and learners.

Ruptures and lines-of-flight in a wardrobe or an educational place

So, let us now as a third detour, follow some thoughts of Deleuze and his co-writers. As for the Pevensie children in Professor Kirke’s wardrobe, the educational place within an educational setting might be just an ordinary everyday place, an ordinary wardrobe with assemblages of suits, shirts, ties and shoes. This stratified space can be seen as a rhizome crossed with molar or molecular lines, which territorialise, organise and restrict the space and its intra-actions. From this new-materialist perspective the intra-actions may be both human and non-human, as material and matter are regarded as active or performative agents, to use the words of Barad (2007). At other times, the wardrobe or the educational place seems to be a smooth space, a space that is not so stratified, not so limited or restricted by codes or rules, where ruptures and lines-of-flight might appear. These lines-of-flight create or produce new possible plug-ins, openings and networks in which matters, material and humans intra-act, become and learn: ‘There is a rupture in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode into a line-of-flight, but the line-of-flight is part of the rhizome. These lines always tie back to one another’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 9). According to Williams (2008) rooms have the possibility to become smoother when we free ourselves from habits and habitual patterns. For the Pevensie children, as newly arrived in Professor Kirke’s house, the wardrobe was not only a small room with clothes, but a space within a world they were about to discover. That is to say, wardrobes or educational places can become assemblages of desire, what Deleuze and Guattari (1987) call war machines that create lines-of-flight.

Before going into desires and war machines as part of changing educational places, let us outline the concepts of assemblages and rhizomes. Deleuze’s and Guattari’s concept of the assemblage (1987) describes the ‘unexpected, disparate and productive connections that create new ways of thinking and living’ (Colebrook, 2002: 76), or becoming, a sort of ‘incorporeal transformation’ (Buchanan, 2015: 390) as these processes of becoming run through ongoing entangled and moving relationships and modes of existence (Deleuze, 2004). As Buchanan (2015) has expressed it: ‘the assemblage is the productive intersection of a form of content (actions, bodies and things) and a form of expression (affects, words and ideas)’ (390).

Within assemblages there is ‘a multiplicity of dimensions, of lines and directions’ (Deleuze and Parnet, 2006: 100). These lines form us: ‘we are made up of lines’ (Deleuze and Parnet, 2006: 93). In the rhizomes new plateaus and lines are possible: like ‘movements of deterritorialization and the processes of reterritorialization which appear in an assemblage’ (Deleuze and Parnet, 2006: 100). Deleuze and Guattari (1987) express the concept of rhizomes in the following:

It is composed not of units but of dimensions, or rather directions in motion. It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills… the rhizome is made only of lines: lines of segmentarity and stratification as its dimensions, and the line of flight or deterritorialization as the maximum dimension after which the multiplicity undergoes metamorphosis, changes in nature (21).

According to Deleuze and Guattari (1987), war machines have nothing to do with wars, neither the war that the Pevensie children just escaped from, nor other wars, but rather with desire. The war machine or machine of desire can be seen as another form of revolt, as a machine with ‘revolutionary powers’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 2010: 9) as ‘the nomads invented a war machine in opposition to the State apparatus’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 24). This thought can thus be connected to, but also differs from, Kristeva’s concept of revolt, where revolt is ‘an opposition to already established norms, values and powers’ (Kristeva, 2014: 4), offering openings for constant critical renegotiations of limiting, marginalising or normalising practices and orientations. The four children in Lewis’s fiction could thus, in Deleuzian terms, be called nomads, who through the wardrobe created their own desire and war machine. Using the concept of nomadism as developed by Deleuze, may help us to think somewhat differently about what happens with the children in the wardrobe or about what happens to students within a transforming and changing educational place.

According to Deleuze and Guattari: ‘The nomad distributes himself in a smooth space; he occupies, inhabits, holds that space; that is his territorial principle. It is therefore false to define the nomad by movement’ (2010: 44). The Pevensie children’s war machine desired something other than the current state, maybe World War II, that they could not affect or the quiet and calm life in Professor Kirke’s house. Their desire could then be seen as a resistance or disapproval, a revolutionary-machine, in which different intra-actions and deterritorialisations are made possible:

The bodies and environments are traversed by very different speeds of deterritorialization, by differential speeds, whose complementarities form continuums of intensity, but also give rise to processes of reterritorialization. At the limit, it is the Earth itself, the deterritorialized … and it is the nomad, the man of earth, the man of deterritorialization – although he is also the one who does not move, who remains attached to the environment, desert or steppe (Deleuze and Parnet, 2006: 101).

In relation to an educational place, the discursive and material state apparatus limits or enhances certain ways of acting, talking and learning while others are yet to be desired. For example, there are moments when activities occur in a totally different direction than the teacher plans for, when the educational place is smooth and rhizomes with lines-of-flight appear, and lead the learning in totally new directions. Another example is the digital, blended and hybrid learning places that have increased in today’s educational contexts, as already mentioned above. These educational spaces and places are in a way beyond the physical room as the students often are wirelessly connected to the web, through computers, tablets and smartphones, and as Alexander (2004) points out, the’ nomadic swarms [of students] are already arriving’ (67). We could say that the students become nomads in intra-action with digital techniques – the computer or smartphone becomes their own sphere. Conceptualised thus, it remains that commonly shared spaces are where the students distribute themselves, whether on Facebook, Instagram or on platforms set for education.

To conclude this Deleuzian detour into wardrobes and educational spaces and places in transformation, the concept of assemblages opens up rhizomatic thinking about an educational place. All agents involved have the opportunity to become something else, in a metaphorical becoming-kings-and-queens-of-Narnia, becoming-agents-of-change or becoming-new-curriculum. Ongoing affective, entangled and moving relationships and modes of existence can form assemblages that are both inter-corporeal and entangled.