Becoming

1. Second Language Education Research, the Construction of Gendered Identity and BecomingDouglas Fleming PhDUniversity of OttawaFaculty of Educationdfleming@uottawa.caAERA, 2012

2. Becoming • Immigration is an example of the disruption (deterritorialisation) and reconstruction (reterritorialization) of personal identity. • “majority implies the state of domination”… • “becomings are minoritarian”… • “becoming is the movement by which the line frees itself from the point” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, 291-292).

3. Becoming Woman “situation of women in relation to the man-standard” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 291). “short-circuits the self-evident identity of man” (Colebrook, 2000, p.12). “necessarily affects men as much as women” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 291).

4. Nation, Citizen and Identity: A Study of Punjabi-speaking Immigrants Enrolled in a Canadian Adult ESL Program examined conceptions of Canadian citizenship; school district adult ESL program; prepared in consultation with community leaders; questionnaires (114); semi-structured interviews (25); and detailed text content analysis (10); revealed significant gaps between the views expressed by these learners and national assessment/ curriculum documents such as the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB). Fleming, D. (2010). Racialized forms of citizenship and the Canadian language benchmarks. Canadian Journal of Education 33/3, p. 588-616.

5. Challenges: • obtaining employment; • overcoming discrimination; • family goals trump individual goals; • maintenance of first language and culture; • ambiguous attitudes towards second language acquisition. • Citizenship: • a shift in identity; • a commitment to their new nation-state; • attitudes shaped by contrasts with previous nation-state; • multiculturalism; • access to citizenship rights; • respect for the rule of law.

6. An emergent theme: The unique challenges related to the experiences of women • a liberating experience: • "girls are free here" • related to jobs: • "there is more freedom [in Canada] because in India girls don't work” • “boys have a job [in India], girls have no job" • related to education: • “those families who are educated have same standard for boys and girls."

7. Freedom concretely represented in terms of: marriage choice: “some relatives say that you get married. I say no, first my career. Cause my own life, my own decision in Canada”. reproductive rights: “if I were in Punjab I would have babies earlier” dress: “in Canada we can wear every types of clothes”. access to the public sphere: “we can't go anywhere without permission in India… no trouble here in Canada”

8. The experiences of men: Freedom was represented in terms of greater degree of citizenship rights and work opportunities; No references to qualitative changes, except in terms of a more equitable relationship to women; “the people think what in Canada the people of woman say. No man stronger. No woman stronger. Same. Both same. Right.” “this is a main problem for Indian people man's. They say that we have to change the new. My state's pupils they have to change, that they think that they should think that woman and man same. I am happy with that.”

9. Complexity and Tension: *S: Indian girls are so crazy. *D: Yeah, why? *S: They don't like India. They like Canada. *D: Yeah. *S: If they're rich they don't like India. They say no, I like to work hard but live in Canada, not in India. *D: Really. *S: Yeah. *D: Well, that's interesting. Why? Why are they like that? Why are they crazy? *S: When they see pictures, beautiful pictures, beautiful scenes they don't know about the reality of Canada. *D: O.K. do you think that after they come to Canada they sort of wake up? *S: Yeah. Like me. *D: Would you ever say no to your parents? *S: Humh, humh. *D: Would you ever no, I don't want to get married? *S: Yeah, I say, but they said it's our custom. • : Yeah, my wife she doesn't like me shaved. She want to back me. • *D: She wants you to go back to becoming a ....She wants you to be • baptized? Is it the Kalsa? • *S: Yeah.

10. “A becoming is always in the middle” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, 293). *D: Yeah, so you're not going to be in an arranged marriage? *S: No, not compulsory. *D: O.K. so you will go into a love marriage if you want. If you want? *S: Yeah, if I want. My father give me permission if we want any, but that guy's JAT. *D: He should be JAT? *S: JAT. *D: Oh absolutely JAT. O.K. so not complete freedom. *S: Not, it is different.

11. For these immigrants, becoming is NOT a linear or striated movement from one static or Indian identity to another equally static Canadian identity. Rather, it is a complex rhizomatic process that opens up sets of countless and multiple possibilities. This process is nomadic, in the sense that there is no end point. The pedagogical implications: Curricula should be centered on experience and not “in compliance with an unquestioned set of pre-established values” (May & Semetsky, 2008, 143).

12. Becoming • Deleuze & Guattari have been by criticized for being obtuse (Sokal & Briemont, 1997), inconsistent ontologically (Žižek, 2003) and overly idealist and metaphysical (Badiou, 1997). • Certainly, their work is challenging (often frustrating) for those of us not claiming to be post-structuralist philosophers. • Nonetheless, in this presentation I have explored the potential value of one their concepts for educational researchers: the construction of alternatives to simplistic binary oppositions. • As Sotirin (2005) argues, becoming potentially “explodes the ideas about what we are and what we can be beyond the categories that seem to contain us” (p. 98).