(De)facing the face of lecturing with Deleuze and Guattari

Abstract

This paper articulates the separate accounts of facial education and lecturing found in A Thousand Plateaus in order to theorize a new concept of lecturing for a post-digital university. Many accounts of Deleuze and Guattari in educational theory turn away from lecturing as hierarchical and striated, yet this approach denies Deleuze and Guattari’s deterritorialization of the practice through their description of a lecture by the character Professor Challenger. When read alongside their plateau on facialization, Challenger’s unusual performance can be interpreted as an interruption of the abstract machine of facialization that animates traditional accounts of lecturing. The article concludes with implications for a de-faced form of lecturing for a post-digital university.