Topological Views of Visual Pedagogy: Towards Nomadic Processes

Twenty years have passed since Elizabeth A. St. Pierre (1997) wrote so eloquently about holding tight to the "possibilities of nomadic inquiry" (379) in the context of writing about ethnographic practice in the field, and feminist sensibilities. This paper takes up these ideas rooted in one of Guattari and Deleuze's central themes in A Thousand Plateaus (ATP) in their chapter on "Nomadology: The war machine" to ask what if the times and spaces of visual pedagogy were conceptualized in such ways as to resist territorialization into political and ideological ends. As Paul Virilio comments when interviewed by John Armitage (1999), that "images have turned into ammunition” (re.. logistics.. front line etc) ... a logistics of perception" (45), and "if you look at the Second World War, there was no bombing without photographs ... We have, therefore, now entered a type of war about directing images…the image is right in the middle of the mechanism” (46).

If we ascribe to the interest of ATP in achieving a liberating effect from a certain kind of academic discourse, then a "nomadological" understanding of the world, that the world is constantly on the move, "without departure or arrival" (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 353) is useful for conceptualizing a refusal to assign an address, or to ask directions in order to locate, fix, or determine the "what" and "how" and "for what purposes" of visual pedagogies. What this paper will attempt to conceptualize then, is a topological approach focusing on the not knowing when/where of visual pedagogies as visual/temporal practices, or "practices of space" (Game 1991, p. 148) without romanticizing the idea of the nomad as homeless, exile, or placeless. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) show nomads do not inhabit/hold space and so are not defined by movement, but rather permit a deterritorialization of thought.