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‘Staying stratified – organized, signified, subjected, is not the worst
that can happen’ 16
Of, course we always depart from a kind of stratified, organized, signified subjectivity.
The question, in the light of Deleuze’s philosophy, though, is;
and what to do about that? 17
We could try to look at our signified subjectivities critically, and tell those stories
of what we see that we do with ourselves, to highlight what we for the moment
are ‘trapped’ in. And we could, as I choose to do with this example, try to look
for those ‘leakages’ and ‘lines of flights’ that are always part of our ready-made
mappings. We could look for and highlight those children from the desk drawer.
Try to find ways to change our gaze from judging to curiousness, to use an eye
that is an eye of leaks instead of lacks. It is a kind of careful, pragmatic, experimentation
that Deleuze, funnily enough, has defined in what looks like a little
agenda of how to change your life;
‘This is how it should be done: Lodge yourself on a stratum (your
organism, your subjectivity, you regime of signs), experiment with
the opportunities it offers (change your body patterns – sleep, exercise,
diet), your personality (your emotional patterns, thresholds and triggers;
what turns you on or off), your writing or speaking habits ( learn how
to ‘stutter in your own language’, pick up some slang, or simply read
new, ‘minor’ authors), find an advantageous place on it (where you
can be safe and still experiment), find potential movements of de-territorialization,
possible lines of fl ights (listen to offers to leave home,
to change your habits).’ 18
We are now going to turn to the example of an attempt at such a careful,
pragmatic experimentation. It is a story about my little niece, Stella Nona, and
what took place when she was about to learn to walk. When I saw Stella Nona’s
attempts to start walking, I wanted to try to use other ways of understanding
this apprenticeship, than the ones I had learnt through my pre-school teacher
education. Being a pre-school teacher I was completely immersed in the theories
about a child’s development, produced by the social sciences and more specifically
theories coming from developmental psychology. These theories had taught me
that a child develops in specific phases and patterns. A child that learns to walk
has for example, got to first learn to crawl in a specific pattern. Developmental
psychology, as it has been taught to pre-school teachers and used by pre-school
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