Nomad: No Passport/Too Many

So think about what Rosi Braidotti (1994) writes:

The nomad is only passing through; s/he makes those necessarily situated connections that can help her/him to survive, but s/he never takes on fully the limits of one national, fixed identity. The nomad has no passport – or has too many of them (p. 33).

Trying to Find Home (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

This idea of nomadic identity raises some interesting possibilities related to schooling and learning and connects powerfully with work by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) who write that "the life of the nomad is the intermezzo" (p. 381). Deleuze (1995) adds that nomads "transmute and reappear in the lines of flight of some social field" (p. 153).


A couple of questions I am wondering about:

• How might the concept of nomad be applied to education?
• What types of engagements allow for learners who have no passport or too many?
• How might we, in the design of learning, help students unfix their school identity/ies?

Work Cited

Braidotti, Rosi. 1994. Nomadic subjects: Embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory. New York: Columbia University Press