The Refrain of the A-Grammatical Child

Abstract

The article critically interrogates the figure of the child in Deleuze and its relation to language as an entry point to the question of what a materialist theory of language might involve and how it might be put to work in qualitative methodology. The Deleuzian child is a figure of destratification and resistance to dominant narratives—a resistance that is inextricably bound up with the materiality of the child’s body and its relation to language. Not yet fully striated by the rules of grammar that order and subjugate the world, children challenge “the hegemony of the signifier” by remaining open to multiple semiotic connections. What would it mean for qualitative methodology to engage its own “becoming-child”?