What can a concept do? Rethinking education's queer assemblages.

In a discussion of Deleuze's theorization of concepts, Todd May asks “what can a concept do with that which cannot be identified?” Or to put it another way, May writes – “A concept is a way of addressing the difference that lies beneath the identities we experience.” This is not to say that identities, concepts, and experiences are linked in particular ways. The possibility of extending what a concept can do is also brought under scrutiny by Ann Burlein, who draws on the work of Elizabeth Wilson to argue “Feminism needs to engage with scientific authority not simply at those sites where it [science] takes women as its objects, but also in the neutral zones, in those places where feminism appears to have no place or political purchase.” “Why not feminist critiques of the liver or the stomach, she asks?” Such styles of thought are the inspiration for this paper. We argue that queer concepts in education should not stop at places where education takes queer bodies as its objects, but that queer concepts have an important role to play in places where, at first glance, they appear to have no place or purchase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]