Forskningsarbete pågår - Umeå universitet

part of the pre-school child’s identity, then, can be seen as nothing more than
another drawn map of the desirable child for a pre-school practice. This becomes
clear when we have to face children in pre-schools that for one or another reason
do not fit into the stereotyped definition of individuality;
‘Once you are in a pre-school or in a day-care centre, each child’s identity
is limited to that of a preschooler or a day-care child. In other words
the child’s identity must conform to what is demanded. We all know
that children who don‘t conform are problems in pre-schools or daycare
centres. They bring in, or carry with them, aspects or fragments
of identity that are unacceptable for the institution, which will then
make use of different therapeutic, psychological or moral devices to try
and get rid of what is then thought of as annoying, or even in some
cases considered as deviant behaviours. Identity is in this way not in
cultural ‘roots’, not in a pre-existing, ‘pre-individual’ arena.’ 10
Now, this limited definition of individuality could be challenged by the way
Deleuze talks about a life. A life signifies a kind of identity without a self. The self,
or the Me has, as described in relation Descartes’ ‘cogito, ergo, sum’, the impact
on our thought so as to name us and specify us as specific individuals.
‘We may think of life as an empiricist concept in contrast to what John
Locke called “the self”. A life has quite different features than those
Locke associated with the self – consciousness, memory, and personal
identity. It unfolds according to another logic: a logic of impersonal
individualization, of singularities rather than particularities. It can
never be completely specified. It is always indefinite-a life.’ 11
Without a self, and all the attributes that science has given to it, an individual
could be not specified. It could be an individual that is constantly changing, not
possible to identically imitate, not possible to fit into the same map as another
individual. Instead of an individual this would be a singularity. It is never possible
to map a singularity, and then use the same map to describe another singularity.
A singularity only comes around once. And in fact, when one thinks about it,
how many individuals do we actually know of who can fit into the same map?
When I went through my pre-school teacher education, I was supposed to go
out in the schools and do observations. My task was to observe the children and
find corresponding references to their behaviour in the course literature (literature
that was all about developmental psychology and the natural development
of the child). So many children ended up in the desk drawer, since they did not
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