Rhizomatic approaches to learning: A study in how the stretching of time and manipulation of cosmic interventions links to issues of cheating and academic malpractice.
Cosmic Interventions as viable rationale for academic study
The emergence of this course, via Tweet, to my conscience was serendipity and perhaps more than that evidence of an inter-connected organic space in which we exist and which provides the pathways. Having already committed to a literature review that would largely focus on the rhizomatic approaches to engagement as the best way to discuss non-institutional learning, this actually felt like a cosmic intervention. I don’t actually know what a cosmic intervention is, or if it is in any way possible – it certainly seems outside the taught disciplines of the natural and social sciences. And, just like and at the start of the sentence, that seems partly the point. Rhizomatic learning is a non-theoretical theory that allows the discussion of the weaknesses of theories that can’t theorise about the things that exists beyond theory.
Bending Time: altering perception and the provision of unfair advantage
My own academic identity without the pressure release of rhizomatic exploration has been complicit in the maintaining of a series of practices, rules and procedures that seem to have hampered rather than helped in any creation of knowledge, meaning making, or contextual (or abstract) awareness. Continuing the quest for a PhD is perhaps the most symbolic of the ways in which complicity shifts beyond knowledge and growth as features in and of themselves, and become something of an externally agreed pattern of recognition that determines my learning. It is of interest that the discussion on the rhizomatic course has been immediate, engaging, free and allowed me to find time in a calendar that always seem so limited in time most other weeks. This time aspect is something of a surprise and I am not sure how that was generated by Dave Cormier, but sure enough time exists for doing this and it feels natural too. Unfortunately, the time expansion feature is not available for other aspects of study such as the literature review and data records at work – these remain strangely stretched and cause a stressful feeling due to ‘lack of time’. Again, the natural and social sciences may have an explanation for this, it seems like a mysterious magic to me and this offers an additional hidden aspect. Is the bending of time cheating or a declaration of mastery in a particular field? Lyotard, (1984) considers that postmodernism is in fact characterised by a mistrust, a disavowal of meta-narratives and that this leads to,
‘…the crisis of metaphysical philosophy an of the university institution which in the past relied on it’ (Lyotard, J. 1984, The Postmodern Condition).
So, the ecology of learning is now divided by those that need to become weary, diminished and enclosed by a series of discredited theoretical models and for whom time is continually scarce, and those that are able to wander with open mind to develop a series of personalised approaches to meaning that define their existence and that offer some rhizomatic wonder amidst such wanderings. Clearly, cheating as a means of gaining an unfair advantage in a shared endeavour would appear to be at the heart of this dichotomous relationship.
Two options seems immediately available. The first, prove definitively that all meta narratives and theoretical concerns are fundamental truths and insist on adherence to these as they are the only possible ways that the world can, will and should be developed. Second, develop rhizomatic approaches to development and emergence and generate new models of communication, collaboration and creation. The obvious issue here is that the second seems much more enjoyable and has been indicated already, has the benefit of time bent in its favour. That this would be perhaps a benefit and could constitute unfair advantage could be contended again with the evidence that almost all governments and institutions are still so committed to option one that option two is unlikely to ever be significant except for a happy few.
Small plots of land and creating launch pads for abstraction. Cheating through collaboration
Sinfield (2014) expressed the value of a relatively limited yet tangible foothold in reality that can facilitate discovery and exploration in the realms of what is yet abstract in the work of creating a future landscape. In a clever piece of retrospective time bending, Bowie (1995, a small plot of land) took Sinfield’s ideas and identified the challenges that extending intellectual freedom can have on the individual. In Bowie’s interpretation of Sinfield the image is of a,
Poor soul [who we may] Spit upon that Poor soul He never knew what hit him
And it hit him so.
And it hit him so.
Poor dunce He pushed back the pigmen The barbs laughed The fool is dead. Poor dunce
He's less than within us the Brains talk But the will to live is dead And prayer can't Travel so far these days. The talk of your lives Standing so near Two innocent eyes Poor dunce Swings through the tunnels and claws his way Is small life so manic Are these really the days
Poor dunce Poor dunce.
He's less than within us the Brains talk But the will to live is dead And prayer can't Travel so far these days. The talk of your lives Standing so near Two innocent eyes Poor dunce Swings through the tunnels and claws his way Is small life so manic Are these really the days
Poor dunce Poor dunce.
(Bowie, D., 1995)
For Sinfield the influence was perhaps more difficult to offer retrospectively, having to first appropriate the views of French philosophers and then transmit backwards to Bowie after the event had happened. Yet, the analysis is pertinent and poignant and compelling. Additional views highlight that other commentators (dpakoha, 2006; liplex, 2006) found that the alignment of this song in a cinematic interpretation of the artist Basquiat meant the song was most likely a summary of the artists sad demise, or alternatively a general reflection on the tragedy of madness (songmeanings.com http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858489083).
If we take Sandra Sinfield’s interpretation as the only one we are going to bother listening to (as I am), we can quite readily read Deleuze and Guattari’s citation as something magical,
"This is how it should be done: Lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continuums of intensities segment by segment, have A SMALL PLOT OF LAND at all times.".
The summarising of such a non-geographic space, or geographic depending on the ways the whole vibe feels at the time you think about it, suggests that Cormier’s enticing introduction generated something other than mere cosmic interventiosn and the bending of time. In fact, on a re-reading of the introduction,
What happens when we approach a learning experience and we don’t know what we are going to learn? Where each student can learn something a little bit different – together? If we decide that important learning is more like being a parent, or being a cook, and less like knowing all the counties in England in 1450? What if we decided to trust the idea that people can come together to learn given the availability of an abundance of perspective, of information and of connection? (Cormier, 2014)
The concept of cheating is less an issue of unfair advantage and more a case of a duty to remind those trapped in the earlier first option, of seeking resolution to unresolvable theory; that learning may not be as they perceive it.
To conclude and to reflect on the introduction to this course it is perhaps most useful to include a quote a mere four days after the introduction on the impact that the intervention has had on a disparate grouping. A grouping that Bosman (2014) considered, ‘…not a good sample group of the total world student population. Sinfield’s (2014) question serving to highlight the benefits of a freeing up of the concepts of learning and making accessible a nomadic sensibility,
‘Who knew that such a simple question - with no hook into recommended reading or essential videos to watch - or anything else at all really - could generate so many ideas - such excellent discussion... Such BIG FAT THOUGHTS?’
(Sinfield, S, 2014).
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