Flight lines and resistance affects: cartography of deaf subjectivity in inclusive education

Abstract

This article, based on a doctoral thesis from the Federal University of São Carlos, investigates the challenges of inclusive education and the violences of subjection that emerge from the normative logic of classifying Deaf bodies and their affects. In counter-flow, bodies arise, tracing lines of resistance through their affections. The research aimed to map practices of (non)violence in inclusive education, identifying molar, molecular, and flight lines that produce subjective marks in the Deaf ethos. Conducted in a high school in the interior of São Paulo, it adopted cartography as a method to problematize Deaf subjectivation practices within school relations of knowledge and power. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari, the study mapped four molar lines (linguistic, spatial, affective, and symbolic-religious violence) and four molecular lines (the non-violence of encounter, of being queer, of being Umbandista, and of another Deafness). The results indicate that inclusion often reinforces hearing-centered patterns but also reveal the potency of lines of flight in affirming singularities and creating ethical practices that resist the violences of subjection. Deafness manifests as a dynamic and irreducible mode of being, countering the semiotic regimes that sustain normative violences. This research contributes to the field of education by highlighting the tensions between subjection and resistance in Deaf subjectivity, reaffirming the urgency of practices that embrace difference and promote ethics as collective creation, making possible more plural processes of subjectivation.