Policy prolepsis in education: Encounters, becomings, and phantasms

Abstract

We argue that the concept of a policy prolepsis is a category of becoming-policy that actualizes educational practices within spaces of desired policy initiatives and implementations. Policy prolepses represent a range of emergent policy ontologies produced through the interface of educational actors’ senses of policy and their estimations of possible outcomes. We use Deleuze's (1990) logic of sense to argue that becoming-policy occurs in a pre-conscious space, and that this space is produced politically and used strategically for desired, yet ostensibly unformed, policy outcomes. Educational policy, then, is an ontological activity representing a myriad of policy outcomes through the management of semiotic desires and actors’ inferences about these persuasive signs. The paper illustrates the practical idea of policy prolepsis by demonstrating how policy apparitions use fear in becoming-policy. Policy apparitions, then, are just one species of policy prolepses that utilize the affect of fear to manipulate educational actors’ interpretations.

Keywords:

• education policy studies
• space
• affective turn
• rhetoric
• becoming
• Deleuze

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Diana Masny and David Cole for developing this important issue. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their excellent comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. Here, we are using Michel Foucault's (1970) notion of problematization that Rabinow (2003) discussed, and which parallels Lather's (2009) ideas of ‘getting lost’ in/with educational policy studies.

2. This is a point also made in political science, e.g. Howlett & Ramesh, 1995.

3. And very much related to Pinar's (2004) ideas of currere and complicated conversations.

4. We have decided to not cite the original in order to highlight the important research that Inna Semetsky has done in the field of education and Deleuze studies.

5. Diana Masny has been developing Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) to great effect for the past decade. Her influential book (2005) provided a number of contributors ways to link MLT to the thinkings of Gilles Deleuze, including co-editor David Cole.

6. Borrowed from Semetsky's (2006) similar schematic (p. 31).

7. And, perhaps, similar to Semetsky's (2006) idea of intuition.

8. Unfortunately, we cannot elaborate on the idea of teacher-becomings here; our goal is to make a contribution to educational policy studies with the work of Gilles Deleuze and ideas of spatial philosophy. However, Zembylas (2003, 2007) discussed the idea of teacher-becomings to some extent, and we engage with this intriguing area in some of our other work.

9. Semetsky (2006) noted that the intermezzo characterized much of Deleuze's thinking, whereas, the intermezzo is spaces in-between; spaces of becoming; spaces of waiting. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) would liken the intermezzo to a rhizome – “a rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo” (p. 25).

10. For example, policies of assessment, accountability, curriculum, including mathematics, literacy, etc.