Agencement, second language education, and becoming: A Deleuzian take on citizenship

ABSTRACT

This article makes novel use of the Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts of becoming and agencement to frame qualitative research on how youth from second language immigrant families conceptualize citizenship. Even though our work here is primarily conceptual, we refer to aspects of a previously published study to concretely illustrate these concepts for the reader. The study in question found that the participants exhibited a mixture of conceptualizations of citizenship, some of which aligned with dominant trends in citizenship education. Other conceptualizations presented dimensions of citizenship that were unexpected and intensive. In our discussion, we use two Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts to deepen our understanding of the complex relationships between competing discourses on citizenship in the context of second language education. We argue, in short, that becoming and agencement help “disturb” the once axiomatic linkage between citizenship education and the nation-state and challenge clichéd notions of “global citizenship.”

KEYWORDS:

• Second language learners
• citizenship
• Deleuze
• becoming
• agencement

Notes

¹ Notably, Deleuze and Guattari (cf. Deleuze & Guattari, 1990/1994) argued that their borrowing of terms such as rhizome is not metaphoric, but rather creative, wherein concepts transform as they enter into new fields of problems. Patton (2010) carefully rehearsed this argument in his chapter “Mobile Concepts, Metaphor, and the Problem of Referentiality,” in which he stated, “Deleuze’s renunciation of metaphor flows from some of the most fundamental commitments upheld throughout his philosophy: his rejection of the representational image of thought, his pragmatism, and his long-standing interest in the mobility of philosophical concepts” (p. 21).