Identités sociomatérielles et création d’histoires plurilingues et numériques

Abstract

In the context of this special issue offering new materialist viewpoints in the field of language education, a sociomaterial perspective allows me to question an anthropocentric definition of learners’ and teachers’ identities in a school context. Looking at two moments of plurilingual and digital story production that occurred in an elementary school located in a major city in British Columbia, I trace the trajectories of sociomaterial agencements which involved learners, languages, spaces, researchers and other materials. I adopt a post-qualitative inquiry stance and go back and forth between concepts from posthumanist, new materialist, Deleuzo-Guattarian and Indigenous perspectives and narrative descriptions, screenshots and other figures. Thinking with theories, I follow unpredictable lines of flight which lead to the rhizoanalysis of two moments lived in a French immersion classroom, and I invite readers to come up with their own questions and to take part in the inquiry process. The following concepts – spatial repertoires, agencements, body materiality, excesses and flows of affect – demand that we widen our gaze in research and in practice so that we can better understand the dynamic identity agencements that gather diverse human and material elements.