Telling ghost stories with the voice of an ogre: Deleuze, identity, and disruptive pedagogies

This article puts the ideas of philosopher Gilles Deleuze to work theoretically and practically in tackling questions of social justice in teacher education. Writing as a teacher educator in the United Kingdom, I situate this work in local, strategic interventions and recent calls for an “ontological turn”. The article has two parts. I first link Deleuze’s differential ontology to an approach to identity and its critique of the impact of neo-liberal discourses on (teacher) education. Second, I examine how Deleuze’s ideas can foster specific practices, focussing on the area of planned pedagogy. I show how non-linear pedagogies and disruptive interventions imply from radical shifts in the operation of thought which Deleuze links to an immanent ethical commitment to events. This new image of thought, I argue, is the most useful thing in Deleuze’s toolbox, helping us to think and act differently in teacher education.