As I thought and reflected about how I would approach this first diffractive reading

response, I considered all of the options that you had listed. An artist and visual learner at heart,
it became clear that in order to really process what I was reading, and to be able to make
connections with/in the readings, I needed to go back to my roots and do what I know best. I’m
going to do my best to take you through my creative process as I worked with these
artist/writers/thinkers and their words.
I began first, by printing out all of the readings from my iPad with my notes, scribbles,
marks, underlines, and highlights. I reread the ideas that caught my eye, challenged me, inspired
me, or caused me to pause or question. I needed a way to “catalog” these varied points, and so
began a rudimentary concept map of sorts. I tried to include directional arrows and page numbers
to try to give myself something to go from...still not quite understanding what might come of it.
This was the actual joy in completing this step before reading the Deleuze and Guattari readings.
The readings opened up the space to be able to go back into the concept map and ask the
question, What is this doing for me? What will this set into motion? Changing the question in my
mind from, What am I going to do with this? to, What is this doing for me? allowed me to begin
to consider the idea that I might be able to capture my thinking or as Deleuze and Guattari would
call this, the image of thought.
My visual representation is made of several layers, each one representing part of my
thought process. I got so into the flow that I was already on layer three before I started
documenting the process (sorry, I’ll remember better next time). I used cork tiles as the
foundation of this piece. Cork in itself is an amazing material. It’s lightweight, can accurately
stop the flow of liquid, and, it’s elastic and resistant, which is also why it can stand up to the
thousands of pushpins that traditionally pierce its surface. I figured the foundation of my
thinking needed to honor these properties. My thinking should be elastic and able to have the
flexibility to be open to new ideas and ways of being/thinking/doing. Resistant because I will
always meet those that try to utilize their position to power over and resistance provides the
ability to continue to disrupt and deconstruct.
The next layer on top of the cork is paper printed with generic maps. The maps are
slightly obscure with markings on them that appear to be pointing out elements such as mountain
ranges, etc. The map became a key element in my visual representation. For me, a map is a
guide, a suggestion of multiple ways to travel, a way to link ideas and thoughts together. You
can choose to always travel in the same direction, but the beauty of mapping is that you can start
from anywhere, go anywhere and there are infinite connections and points along the way. The
purpose then of the generic mapping correlates with an idea from Deleuze and Guattari in their
work, What is Philosophy (Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994, p.58)

Mental Landscapes do not change haphazardly through the ages: a mountain had to
rise here or a river to flow by there again recently for the ground, now dry and flat,
to have a particular appearance and texture. It is true that very old strata can rise to
the surface again, can cut a path through the formulations that covered them
 and surface directly on the current stratum to which they impart a new curvature.

In many ways this is what the underlying map layer represents for me. The mental landscapes that
have been my experiences/thoughts/beings/doings of which are under constant revision, adding
new curvatures as my learning grows. If the map was too specific, it would not leave open the
space for this to happen.
The third layer was where I really started to dive into the texts. I went back to my concept
map, where I had pulled out ideas and words and their corresponding page numbers. I started
cutting out passages and phrases from the texts that I had marked and began grouping them into
major themes I was seeing. These themes revolved around power, fear, freedom, deconstruction
and the “r” words (recognize, resist, rework, reinterpret and respond). Under each of these larger
themes were ideas that I thought would need to be fleshed out later. I began arranging the passages
and phrases by their groups onto the existing layers making sure to allow for spaces where the map
layer could poke through. Having these spaces, again serves as a purpose that images of thought
can flow freely between and among the layers waiting to be rediscovered in new ways.
As I started contemplating the fourth layer, there were a lot of ideas in my head. I decided
to push the map idea a little further. I researched generic city street maps to see how the spaces
were organized, paying attention to the various sized plots and the direction of the streets. After
toying with creating the layer on transparency film and literally laying it over, I decided to be
brave, grab a permanent marker and create a generalized plot and street map on top of the words
themselves. I purposefully didn’t want the map to feel overly populated as there is still much more
exploring for me to do and points of interest to encounter. There are major thoroughfares, some
winding, which feel like familiar territory and ideas I have encountered before. I made specific
choices of where to place the density of plots and streets based on which passages they were being
drawn on top of, and of which caused me the most concern/challenge/inspiration. The opaque
colored in plots are over areas that deal with foundationalism and are a suppression of ideas that
are different from what “science” has deemed acceptable. Betty St. Pierre writes about these
assumptions specifically, “we (NRC) assume that it is possible to describe the physical and social
world scientifically so that, for example, multiple observers can agree on what they see” (St. Pierre,
2002, p. 25). St. Pierre further clarifies that, “When all agrees, conversation stops, and the world
becomes flat” (St. Pierre, 2012, p.497). Other areas of concentration were dynamics of power.
Power was characterized with open and closed space. Disciplinary power is a form of othering,
privileging certain voices of authority who believe they have the right to ask for clarity in other’s
work who doesn’t look like theirs. Post work however, can be seen as an act of resistance, a threat
to unified theory and therefore is an act of power that is emancipatory. Gray, quoted in St. Pierre
speaks to this idea, “A free man who possesses the rights and privileges needed for him to think
and act autonomously-to rule himself, and not be ruled by another” (St. Pierre, 2000, p.489).
To the left of the map is a densely populated plot area, however instead of the plots being
colored in, in their entirety, they are filled with lines crossing over each other, space in-between.
These are the ideas I was focused on thinking about in relation to how I might include them in my
work. Deconstruction and the “r words” (recognize, resist, rework, reinterpret and respond) were
all words I had pulled out of readings across the board, all of which kept bubbling to the surface
of my thinking as I was reading and are documented with both large and small drawn circles. How
does one deconstruct, rework, reinterpret, etc.? I guess by doing exactly what I am doing.
Recognizing that knowing and being are unique to each individual. This was exactly my thoughts
as I read the passage on paralogy. “Paralogy depends on someone with different knowledge who
can ‘disturb the order of reason’, destabilize ‘the capacity for explanation’ and create new norms
and ‘new rules circumscribing a new field of research for the language of science” (St. Pierre,
2012, p. 98). The many straight, intersecting lines in this layer speak the intra-action of the texts
as a whole. In pieces, all of the text together tells a story, a hero’s quest if you will, the challenge
the hero has to overcome is the idea of foundationalism. Using powers of deconstruction and
dissensus, the hero is able to resist and revise, encounter new ways of thinking and move into an
area where they can, “follow lines of flight that ‘blow apart strata, cut roots, and make new
connections” (as cited in St. Pierre, 2016, p. 120). This part of the map is the least populated, free
space, still waiting to be discovered and encountered in new ways.
The fifth layer was my marking layer. I attached words to the foundation, through all of
the layers with pins, sticking for now, but also which have the ability to be moved as my lens
changes and my thinking evolves. At certain points, the layers are fused, for a moment as I pause.
When I think about my thinking in terms of what moved me to mark these ideas in the texts, I
consider heavily the idea from St. Pierre and Deleuze and Guattari, “It is through intensity,
intensity in ‘an encounter, a conjunction, that thought comes to us. Forces in the world overtake
us in an encounter and something in the world forces us to think” (as cited in St. Pierre, 2016, p.
119)).
The forcing of thinking is summed up in my final layer. I used a large piece of twine and
started to use the string between the points to draw how I was making connections. As I spoke out
loud to what I was thinking, seeing all of the points together and trying to make sense of it all, I
began to literally create an assemblage of my thinking, a “vast plane of composition that is not
abstractly preconceived but constructed as the work progresses” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994,
p.188). The image, seemingly disparate, chaotic, entangled, is a system of connection and meaning
making for me and serves as a perfect segue into the last part of the diffractive reading process for
me. What does this all put into motion? Deleuze and Guattari write fairly extensively about art
and many art scholars have used Deleuze and Guattari theories to explain a number of ideas in the
field. I was most inspired by what Deleuze and Guattari speak about the frame in art.

The frame or the picture’s edge is...sections that join up by carrying out counterpoints of
lines and colors, by determining compounds of sensations. But the picture is also traversed
by a deframing power that opens it onto a plane of composition...all of which give the
picture the power to leave the canvas. The painter’s action never stays within the frame; it
leaves the frame and does not begin with it” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1991/1994, p.188).
 This is what this is all doing for me. Giving me the power to leave the canvas, get lost in the
spaces and see what new thinking and ideas continue to emerge.

References

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus capitalism and schizophrenia.

Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1991). What is philosophy? New York, NY: Columbia University

Press.

St. Pierre, E. A. (2000). Poststructural feminism in education: An overview. International

Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 13(5), 477-515.

doi:10.1080/09518390050156422

St. Pierre, E. A. (2002). "Science" rejects postmodernism. Educational Researcher, 31(8), 25-

27. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3594391

St. Pierre, E. A. (2012). Another postmodern report on knowledge: positivism and its

others. International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory and Practice, 15(4),

483-503. doi:10.1080/13603124.2012.696710

St. Pierre, E. A. (2016). The empirical and the new empiricisms. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical

Methodologies, 16(2), 111-124. doi:10.1177/1532708616636147