Donna Carlyle
Themes:
Post Humanism and Belonging
A dog in the classroom acts on instinct, emphasising the value of interactions and thought processes which are not linear. Not all teaching and impact can be measured in a structured way. Deleuze and Guattari’s Body Without Organs and Rhizome theories help to contextualise this way of learning and thinking. Language can be binary but Deleuze and Guattari can enable us to think/see in pictures and ‘images of thought’.
In this experiment Dave the dog put children at ease in the classroom, they patted, twirled and stroked his fur which a regularity which the author likened to playing an instrument. ‘Thus, the children state how Dave makes the classroom ‘feel like home’ and how such material, multisensory memories, evoke and play a part in changing and transforming the atmosphere and structured, authoritarian power of the classroom environment.
Dave the classroom dog helped ‘making visible the invisible (the transmission of affect), non-conscious, unthought, sensory elements which are grounded in Deleuzian actions and concepts’.
I am trying to rethink the atmosphere and power systems of the studio space. As a Dyslexic person I struggle with learning which is based on a A to B outcomes so a Rhizomic approach builds confidence. Deleuzes’ theory of the Body Without Organs supports the agency of objects which are not human, e.g animals, plants, jam jars. Sometimes my teaching can take on a logical and linear trajectory, remembering there are a number of ways that we can learn by accessing and creating knowledge on different planes of experience is empowering and exciting.