‘Experimentation in contact with the real’: networking with Deleuze & Guattari

Abstract

This paper draws on data from an longitudinal case study of a Local Learning and Employment Network (LLEN) instituted by a state government in Victoria in the arena of post compulsory education and training to explore the possibilities of a new approach to thinking about networks, their formation and operation, one that is inspired by ‘A Thousand Plateaus’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Using a rhizomatic approach my focus is on the middle — the plateau — a space that is made of lines moving in multiple directions. Looking at the middle disrupts taken-for-granted understandings and perceptions of linearity; it is in considering middles and plateaus that it is possible to move beyond a concern with joining-up ‘fixed’ entities within existing, and constrained, ways of knowing and, in the process, finding new ways of understanding and realizing the potential of a phenomenon that is ‘fast becoming a standard explanation of structure and action in both the public and private domain’(Considine, 2002)