Forskningsarbete pågår - Umeå universitet

‘A Virtual Child’
Liselotte Borgnon, Lärarhögskolan i Stockholm
Introduction
This article is written with the intention to trouble the notion of identity, and
more specifically, the identity of the learning pre-school child. The argumentation
is based on the theoretical perspective of the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze
and Félix Guattari, and their notion of identity as a result of an ongoing process of
subjugation. Identity from this perspective can never be seen as a natural feature
of a living being, instead identity is a product of society’s will to control, code
and normalize human behaviour. However, the control mechanisms at stake are
not completely stable they find themselves in a constant condition of leakage.
What Deleuze and Guattari call ‘free social energy’ constantly pours through the
holes of the map of identity. ‘Lines of flight’ are constantly being constructed,
away from predicted patterns and mappings of identity. In this article I am going
to try to use experiences from the field of early childhood education to show
how such a process of de- and re- territorialization, (eg. the deconstruction and
reconstruction of new maps of identity) can function in relation to the identity
of the learning pre-school child. I use two of Deleuze’s concepts; ‘a-lives’ and
‘virtuality’ to propose, not a new identity of the learning pre-school child, but
rather a position, or attitude, of careful, pragmatic experimentation in relation
to the identity of the learning pre-school child.
creation of identity
The notion of identity is normally thought of as something psychologically
natural or socially constructed. 1 However, with a Deleuzian perspective we can
question these ideas. According to Deleuze and his colleague Felix Guattari,
natural and social needs do not preceed the constitution of society’s institutions.
It is rather the other way around. Institutions come forward, change and create
natural needs and social demands.
‘This break creates new or transformed institutions – schools, jails, hospitals-
which in turn create ‘natural needs – that is, now incorporated
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