Affective literacies : Deleuze, discipline and power

This chapter explores the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze in order to understand classroom management in terms of the moving power-structure(s) in the teaching and learning context. The classroom dynamic presents a form of affective literacy or literacies in the framework of Multiple Literacies Theory (Masny 2006). This is because the ways in which communication happens in the classroom demonstrates an affective map of the power flows in that context; in this chapter this power differential is dealt with through the concept of 'affectus'. The affective interactivity of literacies in classroom management is complementary to and congruent with the conceptual framework of this writing. This piece will focus on the Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts of 'anti-production' (as presented in Anti-Oedipus) and 'order-words' (in A Thousand Plateaus), that will be unpacked and analysed in the specific educational context of classroom management and as pertaining to teacher education. The two conceptions of desire from Anti-Oedipus (1984) and A Thousand Plateaus (1987) will be reconciled in this chapter through the communication of affective literacies and in the power relationships of affect as affectus.