Museum as an educational space through the prism of Philosophy of Desire of G. Deleuze and F. Guattari

Alexey V. Volkov, D.Sc. in Philosophy, Docent, the Head of the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies, Petrozavodsk State University, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3050-2525, e-mail: alexvolkoff@bk.ru

Svetlana V. Volkova, D.Sc. in Philosophy, Docent, Professor of the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies, Petrozavodsk State University, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8463-100X, e-mail: svetavolkov@yandex.ru

The article explicates the concept of desire by G. Deleuze and F. Guattari in its relationship with the museum as an educational space. The authors come from the idea of French philosophers that to desire means to be in the dynamics of becoming and show that the purpose of the museum is to renew the experience of becoming. It is argued that the experience of becoming is an experience of openness and transition, which is familiar to a man since childhood. It has been demonstrated that the museum is a machine that pushes people to leave their fixed identity and encourages them to go through a confrontation with what appear to them ‘different’, ‘extraordinary’ and even ‘alien’. The authors emphasize that the museum aims to unlock the desire as eagerness to participate in the flow of living meanings and it acts as a locus of affective learning. Affective learning is a process in which subjects and objects are not predetermined, but constituted as a product of an encounter. The study stresses the machine ontology of desire is fundamentally ethical, and the museum promotes a human existence in the ethical attitude to the world. The study concludes the need to incorporate the concept of desire into the conceptual and theoretical arsenal of modern philosophy of education, as well as to solve practically applied problems, such as the organization of educational process in museums.

Keywords: philosophy of education, museum, art, human being, learning, desire, affect

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