Lines of Becoming

Abstract

Several concepts derived from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have provided powerful exploratory tools for a number of planning theorists who have begun to advance a range of political visions, strategies and governance agendas that are in contrast to the traditional objective/goal setting of instrumental planning. This chapter will explore the concept of becoming and the potential it may offer for new theorisation in spatial planning. The chapter sets the scene through a brief literature review which argues that uncertainties are inherent in planning practices. Plans and legislation which present fixed rules or policies project inflexibility and universality and do not allow for commitment to less precise goals, provisional advice and adaptive futures. Deleuze and Guattari's concept of becoming resonates with a world marked by uncertainty. Deleuze makes the world into a 'creative, complexifying and problematizing cauldron of becoming' (DeLanda, 1998). I discuss the concept as an encounter between elements which affects a transition of those elements from one state to another. Being is thus the effect of becoming. Becoming is concerned with how something comes into being and with what it can do, rather than what it is. Following discussion of becoming in general, I consider becomings of specific types; what Deleuze and Guattari term becomings-minor. The authors' first specific becoming is that of becoming-woman, followed by becoming-animal, both of which are relevant for planning theory and practice. I then explore potentialities for development of DeleuzoGuattarian-inspired pragmatics with regard to emergent forms of law and strategic spatial planning before engaging in critical discussion of the potential for 'revolutionary-becoming'. I non-conclude that becomings undermine the stable identities and fixed terms of majority planning cultures. In so doing, they offer us ways to think and act differently in dynamic worlds.