Using Lines of Flight to Create Clear Spaces in Standards-Based Curriculum

At the Edge of a Dream (M.A. Reilly,  2009)

How might lines of flight de/colonize classrooms?

Deleuze and Guattari suggest that new ideas need “clear space”in which to establish a foothold. This is a space devoid of the old rules, regulations, norms, and practices associated with the existing ideas. The new assemblage needs to be differentiated from other competing or existing assemblages. This process of opening up clear space is termed “deterritorialization” and is followed by a process of “reterritorializing” where new rules are coded for the new concept. To dominate effectively, there is a need to cut off a return to old methods, processes, practices, etc., thereby preventing the old practices re-imposing themselves over the new. The escape from “striated space” 5  (deterritorialization) to “clear space” is known as a “line of flight” (p.163). 

Michael Reardon,  Louis Sanzogni, and Arthur Poropat, 2005/2006

I have been fascinated by the idea of lines of flight as a means to de/colonize classrooms for some time. I appreciate the explanation offered by Reardon, Sanzogni, and Poropat (2005/2006) about the relationship between clear space and lines of flight and wonder how clear space might be introduced into standards-based classrooms as an initial method to open curriculum and pedagogy to possibilities.  These methods are lines of flight. 

Deleuze and Guattari's notion of concept creation is one way that space can be cleared in a more deterministic curriculum, such as those that are standards-based. Diana Masny (2012) explains that

Concept creation is precisely creating concepts to push thinking beyond what is assumed or given, to what could be. One way in which Deleuze and Guattari go about doing concept creation involves a process of territorialization, deterritorialization and reterritorialization. (p.9)

So concept creation asks us to take a concept and to look beyond the prescribed meaning. As Claire Colebrook (2001) explains:

Concepts are not amenable to dictionary style definition, for their power lies in being open and expansive. For this reason, we have to understand them through the new connections they make (p.17).

It is the new connections to be made that allow for space to be opened. Further, creating concepts is most often linked with problem finding. Again Masny explains:

Concept creation is the result of looking at a problem/paradox to see how it functions and what it can produce (not solve). What problems produce is the creation of concepts. And the creation of concepts allows us to think differently about a problem (p.180).

Thinking differently is an outcome of creating concepts. Gilles Deleuze in Difference & Repetition notes:

For learning evolves entirely in the comprehension of problems … learning to swim or learning a foreign language means composing the singular points of one’s own body or one’s own language with those of another shape or element which tears us apart but also propels us into a hitherto unknown and unheard-of world of problems. To what are we dedicated if not to those problems which demand the very transformation of our body and our language? (p. 192, as quoted in Masny & Cole, p. 180). 

What is the problem in learning to do X? Encountering another leads to disruption or as Deleuze and Guatttari would name, deterritorialization. Deterritorialization opens a line of flight to a world of uncertainty and in doing so provides an opportunity "to disrupt overcoded learning and teaching practices" (Masny & Cole, p.181) such as the curriculum that yielded from state and national standards.

The rhizome is in motion.





Works Cited

Colebrook, Claire. (2001). Gilles Deleuze. New York: Routledge.

Deleuze, Gilles.  (1995). Difference and Repetition. New York: Columbia University Press.

Masny, Diana &Cole, David R. (2012). Mapping Multiple Literacies: An Introduction to Deleuzian Literacy Studies.  New York" Continuum.

Reardon, Michael, Sanzogni, Louis and Arthur Poropat. (2005/2006). Towards a rhizomatic method for knowledge management. International Journal of the Management, 5 (5), 159-168.

Curated Bibliography of Texts about Rhizomatc Learning and Leadership

Rhizomatic Redesign (M.A. Reilly 2012)

A few weeks ago a friend, Renee, from NH emailed me to ask if I would mentor her for her individualized learning portion of her dissertation.  She attends Antioch University and is in the process of earning her PhD in Leadership and Change. I was of course thrilled to be a part of this venture especially as she is thinking about rhizomatic leadership which I am keen to think about and theorize alongside Renee.  We will work together for the next 4 to 6 months. Below is the start to some readings we may well do (we'll see what surfaces).  Thought I would share this curated list.


Articles/Chapters

1. Chan, Kirsten Ho. (2011). Rethinking Children’s Participation in Curriculum Making: A Rhizomatic Movement. International Critical Childhood Policy Studies, 4(1) 107-122.
2. Cormier, Dave. (2008). Rhizomatic education: community as curriculum. Innovate: Journal of Online Education. 4 (5).
3. Gough, Noel. (2010). Chapter 2: Performing Imaginative inquiry: Narrative experiments and rhizosemiotic play (pp. 42-60). In Thomas William Nielsen, Rob Fitzgerald & Mark Fettes (Eds.) Imagination in Educational Theory and Practice: A Many-sided Vision. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
4. Gough, Noel. (2006). Rhizosemiotic play and the generativity of fiction. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 3 (1), 119-124.
5. Gough, Noel. (2006). Shaking the tree, making a rhizome: Towards a nomadic geophilosophy of science education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 38 (5) 625–645.
6. Gough, Noel. (2004). “RhizomANTically Becoming-Cyborg: Performing posthuman pedagogies”. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(3), pp. 253–265. 
7. Gregoriou, Z. (2004). “Commencing the Rhizome: Towards a minor philosophy of education”. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(3), pp. 233–251.
8. Honan, Eileen. (2007). Writing a rhizome: An (im)plausible methodology. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 20(5), 531-546.
9. Irwin, Rita L.; Beer, Ruth; Springgay, Stephanie; Grauer, Kit; Xiong, Gu; and Bickel, Barbara. (2006). The Rhizomatic Relations of A/r/ tography.  Publications. Paper 4.
10. Leander, Kevin M. & Deborah Wells Rowe. (2006). Mapping literacy spaces in motion: A Rhizomatic analysis of a classroom literacy performance. Reading Research Quarterly, 41 (4), 428-460.
11. Reardon Micahel, Sanzogni, Louis & Arthur Poropat. (2005/2006). Towards a Rhizomatic Method for Knowledge Management. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE MANAGEMENT, 5(5), 159-168.
12. Reilly, M.A. (2014). To enter stone, Be water: Situating literacy coaching as rhizomatic. Reading & Writing Quarterly:Overcoming Learning Difficulties, 30(3), 293-295.
13. Sanford, K., Merkel, L. & Madill, L. (2011). ’There’s no fixed course’: Rhizomatic learning communities in adolescent videogaming. Loading… The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association, 5(8), pp. 50-70.
14. Sasser, Tanya. (2012). Bring Your Own Disruption: Rhizomatic Learning in the Composition Class.  Hybrid Pedagogy, 30.12.2012.
15. St.Pierre, E.A. (2004). Deleuzian Concepts for Education: The subject undone. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(3), pp. 283–296.
16. Young, Alex Trimble. (2013).  Settler Sovereignty and The Rhizomatic West, or, The Significance of the Frontier in Postwestern Studies. Western American Literature 48:1 & 2, pp. 115 - 139.

Knowmadic Learner (M.A. Reilly, 2012)

Blog Posts/Web/Prezzi/YouTube, etc.

1. Academic Papers via the Mendeley Group: Rhizomatic Learning
2. Cormier, Dave. (2012).  Embracing Uncertainty – Rhizomatic Learning in Formal Education. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJIWyiLyBpQ [Accessed 13.3.2013].
3. Cormier, Dave. (2011). Workers, soldiers or nomads – what does the Gates Foundation want from our education system?
4. Cormier, Dave. (2011). Rhizomatic Learning – Why we teach?
5. Cromier, Dave. & Reilly, M.A. (2011). PlexusCalls - The Rhizome: A New Metaphor for What We Learn and Know. 
6. Crump, Helen. (2014). Rhizomatic learning: metaphors, synergies and semantics #rhizo14
7. Gangi, Jane. (201).  A Brief Introduction to Rhizomatics Via Sheri Leafgren’s Reuben’s Fall
8. Mackness, Jenny. (2014). Principles for Rhizomatic Thinking . 
9. Reilly, M.A. (2013).  The Random and the Intentional: Growing a Business Rhizomatically
10. Reilly, M.A. (2012). Knowmads, Rhizomes, and Minecraft: Exploring the Edges of Learning in a Middle School Classroom (prezi)
11. Reilly, M.A. (2011). Reimagining Learning as Lines of Flight.
12. Reilly, M.A. ( 2011). We Are Pando: Rhizomatic Learning.
13. Steves, Tobey. (2014). Uttering towards otherwise: Students as rhizomatic nomad assemblages.
14. Stewart, Bonnie. (2011). the rhizomatic learning lens & what rhizomes are good for.

Books

1. Cambpell, Neil. (2011). The Rhizomatic West: Representing the American West in a Transnational, Global, Media Age. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska/Bison Books.
2. Cormier, Dave. Making the community the curriculum: Rhizomatic learning in action.
3. Delanda, Manuel. (2002). Intensive science & virtual philosophy. New York: Continuum.
4. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. (1980). A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. (pdf)
5. Deeluze, Gilles, & Parnet, Claire. (1987). Dialogues. New York: Columbia University Press.
6. Guattari, Félix. (2008). Chaosophy, New Edition: Text and Interviews 1972-1977. Sylvère Lotringer (Ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
7. Leafgren, Sherri. (2011). Reuben's Fall: A Rhizomatic Analysis of Disobedience in Kindergarten. Walnut Creek, CA: Leaf Coast Press.
8. Maher, Susan Naramore. (2014). Deep Map Country: Literary Cartography of the Great Plains. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska/Bison Books.
9. Reilly, M.A. (2011).  The familiar falling away: A little book of rhizomes. Blurb.

Dissertations

1. Humphreys, Chloe. (2012). Mapping literacy spaces in motion: A Rhizomatic analysis of a classroom literacy performance. Burnbay, BC: Simon Fraser University. 

Rhizomes - This Is Pushing My Thinking

Screenshot from Rhizomes by Marc. 

I stumbled across this slideshare by Marc while (re)turning/delving/wading in the stream/avoiding while finding middles of things/leaping into topics/discussions/questions about 
a vanishing point in a line of flight.

I  had queried rhizomes.  

House by the Tracks (Reilly, 2008)

I am keen to conceptualize what a vanishing point in a line of flight might mean and to whom and in what named context. 

I'm not satisfied to understand this as an abstraction--a(re)reading of Deleuze & Company. 

I want to be able to layer an understanding of this on to something I make as I think it is important for reasons I cannot name, today.  

In the Middle (Reilly, 2014)

(And here in that small space of tacit knowing, I want to eventually say something about standards and how they define us as they doom us. No hyperbole intended.)

I don't know why this is pulling at me, but I trust that there is something here/there/undisclosed I need to learn/unlearn/relearn/abandon/soak up/ignore.


Well you know how that goes, and not.



This slideshow caught my eye.  

Perhaps it will interest you too.

Rhizomes from Marc

Imagining A to Z: G is for Generate Lines of Flight

G is for Generate Lines of Flight

A line of flight is a line of possibility.

Wood and Brown (2005) write: "...lines of flight are discontinuities, disruptions, splits or fractures that intercede in and break through the tedium of lives and the uniformity of things, changing the nature and significance of familiar histories and given situations as they interact along the way (Deleuze 1993)" (p. 13).

Lines of flight offer us ways to become otherwise, to recast the familiar.

Lately I have been making images with my iPhone.  This is relatively new to me. For the most part, I have made images using a Nikon with an 18 to 200 mm lens.  The iPhone requires me to see differently.  It is more intimate, requiring me to be closer in proximity with the subject. 

Juxtaposing the way I see with each of these allows lines of flight to occur: the space that is revealed between each signals a space where something new might be created.

Work cited:

Working paper
Wood, M. and Brown, S. (2009) Lines of Flight: Everyday Resistance along England’s Backbone. Working Paper 46. University of York, The York Management School. http://www.york.ac.uk/management/research/workingPapers.htm

Note: In this series of post during the month of April, I am participating in the A to Z blogging challenge, with each day focusing on a letter.  In order to bring some cohesion to this process--releasing the imagination is the focus of each post.

Exploring Transmediation & Rhizomatic Learning through Art Conversations

Bluebird (Feb. 2012 by M.A. Reilly

(For Saturday @ Western Connecticut State University/ED822)




I. Exploring Transmediation through Art Converasations


What is transmediation? According to Semali, transmediation is:

The process of taking understandings from one sign system and moving them into another in order to make meaning or 'representing' meaning across sign systems. From Semali, L.M. (ed). 2002. Transmediation in the classroom: A semiotics-based media literacy framework. NY: Peter Lang.

Art conversation

View more presentations from Mary Ann Reilly.

Art Conversations (by M.A. Reilly, published in English Journal)

II. Engaging in Art Conversations

Engagement 1:  You have been partnered and have been given a sheet of finger paint paper and paint. Track how meaning emerges and changes as you read/view/hear this Charles Bukowski poem, "Bluebird." Discuss the work, your feelings and thoughts with your partner using the finger paints.   You are not allowed to actually talk, but instead need to converse using the paints.

I.  ENTERING THE POEM

1. Listen to the poem.



from The Last Night of the Earth Poems
 
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s still singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?


II. DWELLING IN THE POEM 


2. View Tomas Ralph's short animated film based on the poem


Bluebird from Thomas Ralph on Vimeo.



3. View "Bluebird" a multimodal text based on Bukowski's poem and created by California is a Place.


Bluebird from California is a place on Vimeo.

4. View this is an animation of "Bluebird" created by Monika Umba.




III. LEAVING THE POEM

5. Listen to this a musical Composition by Sympathy 7 based on the Bukowski poem.

In December 2010 a friend recommended a poem by Charles Bukowski called Bluebird. During that time I was working on a musical piece but was unsure of its purpose. Upon reading Bluebird i knew instantly what i should do. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as i enjoyed composing it.

 6. Watch Damjan Radovanovic film.

Bluebird from Damjan Radovanovic on Vimeo.


7. Watch SinChan's film.


Bluebird from SinChan on Vimeo.


III. Experience as a Moving Force

'Every experience is a moving force. Its value can be judged only on the ground of what it moves toward and into' (John Dewey. 1938/1997. Experience and education, p.38). Transmediation potentially helps to reveal the trajectory of an experience through the presence of multiple symbolic (re)presentations" (Reilly, 2010. "Opening possibilities through transmediation (p. 3).

1. Place your art conversation on the table alongside your peers.
2. As you view the art, consider what understandings you made of the poem, Bluebird.  Did your understanding change as you engaged with the various artworks based on or influenced by the poem.
3. Did meaning emerge or change as you engaged in the art conversation?
4. Gallery Walk: NOw align your work with your peers and take a gallery walk.  Are there any patterns across the artworks that you notice?  Are there points of departure?
5. Think about these, make a few notes (chose whatever form you want) and let's talk about this in about 15 minutes.

IV. Rhizomes, Lines of Flight, and so on...

Rhizomatic Learning

View more PowerPoint from Mary Ann Reilly

Lines of flight

View more PowerPoint from Mary Ann Reilly / Blueprints for Learning, Inc.

Social Mapping, Lines of Flight, and Late Night W(a/o)ndering

Tonight a provocative statement was posed by Pam Moran (@pammoran) and then responded to by Chad Sansing (@chadsansing) over at Twitter.

Take a look:

So I am thinking about social mapping inside systems and wondering if anyone can point me/us in a direction that might show examples of the thinking that informs the generation of a social map.

I know I have rhizomes on the brain, but I can just about hear Deleuze and Guattari saying something relevant about all this.

Something about maps, tracings, and lines of flight.

Thinking about @chadsansing's tweet. And perhaps it is the presence of lines of flight that signals the collapsed space of hierarchy.  Perhaps these are the sparks.  Could critical mass of a system collapsing be brought about through the generation of idiosyncratic lines of flight?

A line of flight is a rupture in an established system.

Like the various actions that comprise the 'Occupy Movement'.

"A line of flight is a line of becoming that brings the system to yet another level of complexity by virtue
of the new knowledge, new concepts, new meanings," writes Inna Semetsky*.

So could you map lines of flight: lines that signal becoming?
Has someone done this?

Do not these lines represent the non-linearity of a system?







*Not by breadth along: Imagining a self-organised classroom. Complicity, 2005.

Inconsequential Noticings, Ruptures & Lines of Flight

Coming through the Rye (2010, M.A. Reilly)

It is often in the seemingly inconsequential noticings that more profound meaning emerges.  This type of moment may be characterized as line of flight.  Steve Best and Douglas Keller (1991) say a line of flight is "the full fledged deterritorializing movements away from molar identity where cracks becomes ruptures and the subject is shattered in a process of  becoming multiple. This is the plane of creativity and desire, and also of death and destruction" (p. 100).

Hmm. A lot to unpack in that statement.

The other evening my son told me that a friend of ours who is also a middle school teacher (Mr D) is developing 'mad Minecraft skills.' The 'teacher' had recently joined my son's Minecraft server and is playing with others on the server--mostly boys from around the world ages 9 to 15.  Mr D, I am told,  entered clearly in the role of learner.

Son: Mr D is not the teacher on Minecraft.
Me: How so? 
Son: Well he's learning and he's quick, but he isn't a teacher even though, you know, he is one.  He's got mad Minecraft skills, though. 
Me: Not surprising. Mr. D is really bright.
Son: I know, but he's the learner and right now it's like I'm the teacher. He's building just like I did when I started.
Me: How's that?
Son: He's got this airborne farm going and he's got a huge mine. That's what I did at first, too. It's like he's me.

This one-minute exchange with a child as he heads off to bed gets me thinking about the perceptions of teacher and learner from the vantage point of student.  Mr D is in the process of establishing a gaming center at the middle school where he works and had asked if he might join Dev's server as a way to learn a bit more before he and his students begin using Minecraft in a multi-player setting. I recognized at the time that Mr D would be learning a lot as he thought about how this virtual world of multi-players might be enacted inside a school.  What I hadn't considered was Mr D's affect on the boys who are playing on the server, especially my son. 

James Gee and Elizabeth Hayes (2011) in Language Learning in the Digital Age, define characteristics of passionate affinity spaces, such as the multi-player game Dev and Mr D are playing. Gee & Hayes write:

We have claimed that out-of-school learning in passionate affinity spaces is competition for schools as we have traditionally thought of them. Learning in these spaces is organized quite differently than in schools. Often people of different ages are together. Different people teach or mentor at different times. The emphasis is on problem solving centered on a shared theme or endeavor, not on “content” derived from a discipline (p. 73).

Curious in weeks to come to see what develops as to roles inside this Minecraft world. Specifically I am wondering what spaces are created and filled when the more traditional roles of teacher and learner shift and alter? Do nontraditional learning spaces such as a Minecraft community provide different types of occasions for the production of lines of flight than traditional classroom spaces where teacher and student roles are maintained? What happens to roles when Mr D resituates the Minecraft community he is envisioning within a middle school environment? In what ways are identities that are composed inside the Minecraft community lines of flight that become ruptures within the school community as subjects are shattered in a process of  becoming multiple?

Wondering what you think about this.


Works Cited
Best,Steven and Kellner, Douglas (1991). Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations. New York: Guilford Press.

Gee, James Paul and Hayes, Elisabeth R. (2011). Language and Learning in the Digital Age.  T & F Books UK. Kindle Edition.

Exploring Lines of Flight at School (and Not)

Lines of flight represent the creative impulses we compose while thinking and doing that offer a seemingly novel way to disrupt concepts cast as dualities. In fact, one might argue that it is the duality that may at first spark the line of flight: a way of moving beyond what is given to explore what might be.  I have been trying to conceptualize lines of flight within rhizomatic learning spaces. Even in the cognitively active classroom where learners are engaged in complex thinking and there is heightened neighbor interactions, the lines of flight beyond the purview of the classrooms and the lesson can be awesome, hard to discern, not in view, never privileged.

Heat out the window.

A 4th dimension inside our 3D world we can't discern.

So what to make us this?

Some things I am wondering and hope you might chime in on:

1. How do we attend to the creative impulses of learners that occur outside the domain of the school and challenge binary ways of knowing--ways we might well be situating as truth ? 
2. What types of environmental and pedagogical considerations might be necessary in order to leverage/cull/come to know such thinking?
3. How might we 'carefully' come to know and invite in (if possible) these lines of flight within the classroom and/or the 'sanctioned' learning? 
4. How often do we stop and acknowledge how little we know about our learners' learning lives beyond our purview?
5. How might lines of flight de/colonize classrooms?
6. How do lines of flight engender inquiry as opposed to categorization?
7. All knowing is constructed. How do lines of flight offer us a method to reduce our binary ways of knowing that may overpopulate a classroom?

Thinking About Lines of Flight (Reilly, 2011)

Hmm.

I am a bit lost in this. A preferable place to be.

Reimagining Learning as Lines of Flight

Lines of Flight (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

1. 

Martin Wood and Sally Brown (2009) write: "A line of flight is essentially a movement of creativity, a practical act or a way of living that wards off or inhibits the formation of ‘centres’ and stable powers in favour of continuous variation and free action." from here

2.

Imagine community spaces, such as schools, theaters, dance clubs, town halls, studios, streets, subways, museums, street corners, post offices, gardens, labs, restaurants, book shops, rivers, parks, coffee shops, piers, mountains, tents, playgrounds, fields, creeks, virtual worlds, beaches, avenues, games, rafts, crosswalks, town squares, libraries, paths, bridges, hospitals, courts, vets, diners, third spaces, hiking trails, barber shops, clinics, valleys, music halls, ferries, fire stations, farms, deserts, skyscrapers, barrios, roads, zen gardens, train stations, sidewalks and so on as potential lines of flight that learners traverse and abandon, producing a map of their learning as they move.

3.

"Becoming-" is a process of change, flight, or movement within an assemblage. Rather than conceive of the pieces of an assemblage as an organic whole, within which the specific elements are held in place by the organization of a unity, the process of "becoming-" serves to account for relationships between the "discrete" elements of the assemblage. In "becoming-" one piece of the assemblage is drawn into the territory of another piece, changing its value as an element and bringing about a new unity. "  from Here.

4.

The rhizome is an antigenealogy. It is a short-term memory, or antimemory. The rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots. Unlike the graphic arts, drawing, or photography, unlike tracings, the rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight. It is tracings that must be put on the map, not the opposite (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988, p. 21).

5.

be you.

http://labconnections.blogspot.com/2011/10/be-you-house.html

6. 

Nomadic Trajectories

From Maria Tamboukou's Bracketing Identities: Nomadic trajectories in the unfolding self.

"The only way to follow these fragmented, incomplete and often contradictory life stories was to follow their "lines of flight," away from pre-established destinies, be they of gender, "race" or class...What is particularly important for multiplicities is that they are defined by "lines of flight," through which they escape enclosed formations and connect to other multiplicities from the outside. There are indeed narrative "lines of flight" emerging from the young women’s narratives, most often leading to planes of inconsistency. Indeed the only way they can be read is not the triangle from where they speak, but from the outside, the planes, where they are attempting to fly...." Maria Tamboukou

Lines (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

7.

In a book, as in all things, there are lines of articulation or segmentarity, strata and territories; but also lines of flight, movements of deterritorialization and destratification. Comparative rates of flow on these lines produce phenomena of relative slowness and viscosity, or, on the contrary, of acceleration and rupture. All this, lines and measurable speeds, constitutes an assemblage (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988,pp. 3-4).

8.  

From Josh:

“Lines of flight are everywhere. They constitute the available means of escape from the forces of repression and stratification. Even the most intense strata are riddled with lines of flight.” – Miguel Rojas-Sotelo

Lines of flight are creative and liberatory escapes from the standardization, oppression, and stratification of society. Lines of flight, big or small, are available to us at any time and can lead in any direction. They are instances of thinking and acting ‘outside of the box’, with a greater understanding of what the box is, how it works, and how we can break it open and perhaps transform it for the better.