Shaking the Tree, Making a Rhizome: Towards a nomadic geophilosophy of science education

Abstract

This essay enacts a philosophy of science education inspired by Gilles Deleuze and FélixGuattari's figurations of rhizomatic and nomadic thought. It imagines rhizomes shaking the tree of modern Western science and science education by destabilising arborescent conceptions of knowledge as hierarchically articulated branches of a central stem or trunk rooted in firm foundations, and explores how becoming nomadic might liberate science educators from the sedentary judgmental positions that serve as the nodal points of Western academic science education theorising. This is demonstrated by commencing two rhizomatic textual assemblages that generate questions, provocations and challenges to dominant discourses and assumptions of contemporary science education. The first of these addresses cultural representations of Sir Isaac Newton and the second makes multiple, hybrid connections among the parasites, mosquitoes, humans, technologies and socio-technical relations signified by malaria.

Thriving in-between the cracks: Deleuze and guerilla science teaching in Singapore

“…One recalls the three images (i.e., the citadel, rhizome, and string figure) characterizing the ways in which science penetrates and is in turn infused by culture (Martin 1998). What was amusing was that Gough (2006) brought to our attention how a Dali sculpture of Isaac Newton--originally created as a Body without Organs [BwO], which is loosely similar to the rhizome concept--was intentionally stratified and co-opted into preferred state narratives about scientific progress, discipline, and innovation in Singapore! Narrating how alike her personal experiences of quilting and the process of scientific inquiry were, a feminist metaphor using the former was described by Flannery (2001).…”

“…Deleuzian concepts have had few forays into science education save for Gough (2006) who showed how academic discourses, social studies of science, science fiction, and pop culture could disturb the tree of modern Western science. Specifically, he envisages this posthuman education of science to draw upon nomadology/rhizomatics to unloosen the 'sedentary points of view and judgmental positions that function as the nodal points of Western academic science education discourse' (Gough 2006, p. 628).…”

Sharing outsider thinking: thinking (differently) with Deleuze in educational philosophy and curriculum inquiry

“…My 'reports' of these experiments are available elsewhere (Gough 2004(Gough , 2006(Gough , 2007a, and my intention here is simply to demonstrate some textual strategies that I use to perform such experiments, with particular reference to the generativity of intertextual readings of selected fictions in catalysing them. Exhibit 6.…”

“…In one of my relatively recent narrative experiments (Gough 2006), I performed a variation on Haraway's approach by reading a narrative of 'scientific fact' -namely, a potted biography of Isaac Newton taken from a school science textbook -within the heterogeneous space created by the production, interpretation, reception and critique of Salvadore Dali's (c. 1980) sculpture, Homage to Newton. However, I departed from Haraway by imagining the 'transformed field' I produced as a Deleuzean nomadic space rather than a 'structured space', and it could also be imagined as a rhizome space.…”

“…In recent years Deleuze and Guattari have inspired each of us in distinctive ways. One of us (Gough 2004(Gough , 2006(Gough , 2007a has produced a series of narrative experiments that foregrounds the generativity of 'rhizosemiotic play' (catalysed *Corresponding author. Email: wsellers@tpg.com.au by intertextual readings of selected fictions) in writing educational philosophy and theory, and the other (Sellers 2008) has produced a doctoral thesis through processes of 'rhizo-imaginary' 'picturing' towards immanent and emergent curriculum theorising.…”