Striated and Smooth Leadership Spaces

Abstract

This article is experimenting with posthuman and new-material approaches to explore new concepts or maybe try to reconceptualize leadership. Thinking with Deleuze and Guattari’s immanent ontology and Barad’s agential realism, I wonder how diffractions and leadership productions in smooth and striated rooms affect and are affected by bodies, work environments, and events. Diffraction is a physical phenomenon concerning how the waves of water, electricity, and light move, overlap, and spread in ever changing directions when encountering obstructions. The research is based on thinking, talking, and wondering with glowing events after shadowing director Maria in the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) center Dandelion. As an encountering thought, a glowing event is challenging our beliefs and basis for discussion on how leadership is both smoothing and striating the space, sometimes creating turning points. The event is glowing as an example of leadership production affecting relations and well-being.