Cinema experiences at school: assemblages as encounters with subjectivities

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to analyse how 15 students at a public elementary school detach from immobile representations of identity through aesthetic self-expressive work with cinema. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblage, I interrogate students’ experiences of discrimination and challenge their processes of developing a short film within cinema workshops at school. I find that when new components regarding cinema, such as material apparatuses (e.g. cameras, stages, sound recorders) and expressive devices (e.g. improvisation, dialogues, corporeal movements), are applied to both the school and subjectivities, there is a rupture of rigid systems of representation and the creation of novel assemblages.

KEYWORDS:

• Difference
• inclusive education
• visual studies
• assemblages

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Marta Infante is Associate Professor of Disability Studies in the Faculty of Education at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Her research and teaching interests have been concerned with issues of social class, disability and ability, gender, sexuality, and race in educational contexts. In particular, her research has been strengthened by connections with post-structural perspectives regarding subjectivities and power.

ORCID

Marta Infante http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0295-1478

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development, FONDECYT [grant number 1130616].