This is Not a Pencil: A Deleuzoguattarian Re-Imagining of the Classroom Milieu

This article presents an examination of the classroom milieu as a means to engage with children's [nomads’] becomings in alliance with associated milieus of others – objects and persons. In the milieu of the classroom the child is becoming student/nomad, and the adult is becoming teacher/State. As the child is nomad in this milieu, it follows that s/he would resist the restrictive implications of shifting identity from child to student (especially the ‘good’ student), manifesting a nomadic penchant for creating lines of flight and resisting the restrictive techniques of power that the school-State serves to impose. The child co-creates and then resists a dynamic milieu especially via situated and moving objects/markers: the school desk/seat, the carpet, and especially the pencil. The classroom as a Deleuzoguattarian place concept is always changing and mutating, and this article is a sort of nomadography revealing and constructing alternative lines of flight that will provoke us to re-imagine the classroom in enlightening and productive new ways.