The risks of a recurring childhood: Deleuze and Guattari on becoming-child and infantilization

Abstract Deleuze and Guattari’s thought on remainders of childhood has proven its worth for educational theory and philosophy. However, thus far the discussion has not paid much attention to their notion of infantilization, which reveals a new dimension of their understanding of childhood. In this article, I develop both their concept of becoming-child and their concept of infantilization. This allows for thinking the remainders of childhood as inherently risky and ambiguous. I argue that this new understanding does not only paint a more complete picture of Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of childhood, but is also better equipped to evade two dangers already identified in the Deleuze and Guattari scholarship: the romanticization of childhood on the one hand and the risky proximity of becoming-child to the acceleration of consumerist capitalism on the other hand.


Introduction
In 2008, the late French philosopher Bernard Stiegler issued a warning call in his book Taking Care of Youth and the Generations.What we are witnessing in Western countries, he says, is the widespread destruction of maturity understood as the ability to think critically and to take responsibility.Malevolent actors such as marketeers and media producers (Stiegler's example is the children's television channel Y ) purposely capture the attention of young children with the goal of controlling them and keeping them in their childhood state. 1 Those that have already matured are nudged to neglect their adult responsibilities in favor of giving in to their immediate drives for satisfaction.Perhaps, Stiegler argues, the definite end of maturity is in sight.All that is left is 'infantilized adults' and children that are taken as minors in every way except for the ability to buy on the markets like adults do.
His warning call is then also a call to arms.Faced with the dangers of infantilization, Stiegler urges us to fight in what he calls a 'battle for intelligence.'The arena where this battle takes place is the educational system.The stakes of the battle are to recapture attention from the malevolent distractors and lead it-instead of into short-circuiting that only aims at satisfaction of immediate drives-into the long and patient process of maturity.In Stiegler's words: 'the true stakes of the battle for intelligence: to reconstitute maturity … ' ( 2010 , p. 50).Stiegler's call has found numerous proponents, as is evident from reading the special issues on his philosophy of education from both Studies in Philosophy and Education and this journal (2020).However, at the same time as this critique of infantilization, the editors of a recent volume on philosophy of childhood argue for a pedagogy that 'allows for a deeper appreciation of the newness that children bring as well as sensitize us to our own "being a child as adults" ' (Kohan & Weber, 2020 , p. 1).They elaborate on this 'being a child as adults' as follows: 'childhood is not seen as a developmental state that needs to be overcome, but rather as an existential state of being human… ' (ibid. ).And in an earlier study, one of the editors writes: 'childhood is something that inherently constitutes human life, and therefore could never be extinguished, abandoned, forgotten or overcome' (Kennedy & Kohan, 2016 , p. 50).In other words: childhood is conceptualized as independent of age; it remains in adulthood as well.But where this is for Stiegler and his followers something to deplore, Kohan and Kennedy rather call for more room for this becoming-child, precisely as a source of resistance to those powers that Stiegler saw as the source of problematic infantilization.
So what should we do with this childhood that 'inherently structures human life?'Is it possible to save its creative potential without risking the fall into infantilization?In this article, I will argue that both Stiegler's and Kohan and Kennedy's views are one-sided.To achieve this, I will read the works of two befriended thinkers-Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari-that stand out in that their works contain both a vehement critique of infantilization and a laudation of what they term 'becoming-child.'My aim in this article is to show that their work allows for a new synthesis of infantilization and becoming-child that incorporates both the dangerous and the liberating potentials of a childhood that remains.
children of all kinds and ages populate the pages of Deleuze and Guattari's works.Since the value of their work for early childhood education and alternative ways of working with children has already been established, 2 my focus in this article is on their understanding of a childhood that remains in adulthood.In this journal, Anne Hickey-Moody ( 2013 ) already provided an excellent analysis of notions of childhood in Deleuze's works (both his single-authored works and the works coauthored with Guattari).However, I believe her analysis requires a supplement in order to arrive at a more complete understanding of Deleuze and Guattari's theorizing of childhood.This will also diminish the danger of romanticizing childhood (rightfully identified by Hickey-Moody) and can also help to think the fate of remainders of childhood in the context of a contemporary capitalism that seeks to appropriate any liberating potentials for its own continuation.
While Hickey-Moody focuses on becoming-child (2013, p. 282), my claim is that Deleuze and Guattari's theorizing of a childhood that remains or recurs also brings into play the concept of infantilization .Becoming-child designates an affective and creative resistance to rigid subjectivities; infantilization designates rather the process of getting more ensnared in them.now although the concept of becoming-child has already been widely researched and applied, 3 its relation to infantilization has not yet been thought through.In fact, the notion of infantilization is only very rarely mentioned and hardly understood in contributions to Deleuzian and/or Guattarian philosophies of childhood.For example, Gary Genosko ( 2009 , pp. 133-134) shortly dwells on the notion in his introduction to Guattari's thought, but he misunderstands it by equating it with-rather than opposing it to-becoming-child.
My questions are therefore: How are these diametrically opposed ways of 'becoming-infant' related to each other?Why should we promote becoming-child when this process can also lead to the homogenization of subjectivity in destructive ways?In other words: how-if at all-can Deleuze and Guattari separate the 'good' becoming-child from the 'bad' infantilization?My aim in this article is to clarify this opposition and to answer these questions.
In order to grasp the notions of becoming-child and infantilization in more detail, it is necessary to not only read Deleuze and the coauthored works, but also Guattari's single-authored works.This has two reasons.First, the critique of infantilization seems to be primarily Guattari's concern.I have found it often in his own works, but only once in Deleuze's own works ( 1998 ).Second, the investigations of becoming-child tend to neglect Guattari's contributions.The volume Deleuze and Children serves as a good example.Many contributions focus on the volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, but these are written not just by Deleuze, but by Deleuze and Guattari together.We should heed Deleuze's warning and not 'overlook Félix' (quoted in : Dosse, 2010 , p. 503).
The article is structured as follows.First, I will present Guattari's critique of infantilization.Although Guattari never explicitly conceptualizes it, the notion is operative in a number of his works and serves to present various problems related to freedom and resistance in the context of what he terms 'Integrated World capitalism' (Guattari, 2009b ).In the second section, I will discuss the concept of becoming-child.Interestingly, this concept is used to think resistance to infantilization.With the notions of infantilization and becoming-child sufficiently clarified for the purpose of this article, I will then discuss their relation in the third section.I will problematize the possibility to neatly separate them in two distinct kinds of childhood becomings.Rather, I will show that allowing for recurrences of childhood always entails risking infantilization.The value of becoming-child as resistance should therefore be nuanced, as it also entails the risk of only strengthening the forms of life one attempts to escape.Finally, in the conclusion I will summarize the main findings concerning infantilization and becoming-child.I end with some suggestions for further research on the concept of a childhood that remains.

Infantilization
The notion of infantilization was surely not new when Guattari started using it in the early 80's.However, the term is used in two related yet different ways.First, the term is used in the history of childhood to designate 'the increasing length of the infantile phase and, inevitably related to this increase, an increasing distance between the infantile and the adult worlds' (Koops, 2011 , p. 3).
Guattari however uses the notion in a different sense.This sense is used in cultural criticism where it designates not the separation of childhood and adulthood, but rather their merging together in a kind of permanent combination of infancy and teenage adolescence (see for example: Barber, 2008 ).Although this sense is related to that used in the history of childhoodsince it also sometimes designates an extreme extension of childhood-it differs in the negative evaluation it gives to this extension.Guattari does not use the term to neutrally discuss cultural shifts in childhood and adulthood, but rather to criticize a stupefying tendency in contemporary processes of subjectification. 4 Guattari sums up his stakes in Chaosmosis: 'The future of contemporary subjectivity is not to live indefinitely under the regime of self-withdrawal, of mass mediatic infantilization, of ignorance of difference and alterity -both on the human and the cosmic register ' ( 1995 , p. 133; 2018, p. 65).In the following, I will explicate the different aspects of infantilization as a mode of contemporary subjectivity.
Infantilization is mainly characterized by homogenization.Guattari does not explicitly argue why this is so, but the link between infantilization and homogenization seems to consist of the breakdown of critical maturity (infantilization) which is then replaced with standardized identities and modes of living (homogenization). 5crucial to this process is that subjectivity's dependence on singular situations is repressed as much as possible.Infantilization affects all three ecologies: the mental, the social and the environmental (see Guattari, 2014 ).
In the first register of the mental, infantilization entails a denial of finitude .The infantilized subject is kept distracted from what Guattari calls 'the "mysteries" of life and death ' ( 2013 , p. 44; 2014, p. 35).Rather than facing up to their limited time on earth, infantilized subjects flee into the 'eternity of the moment' by means of mass media and television (lower, 2019 ).Actualizing Guattari's remarks for today, we can extend this to binge-watching series or scrolling through social media feeds. 6The companies presenting the series and content happily assist by using mechanisms such as auto-play (youTube, netflix) or 'infinite scrolling' (Facebook, Instagram).
In the mental ecology, infantilization not only affects the subject's relation to its own birth and death, but also the relation with the body and fantasy (2014, p. 35).The subject is cut off from the experience of its body and is no longer able to feel what its body does and signals.Psychoanalyst Paul Verhaeghe ( 2018 ) affirms that the complaints of his patients deal more and more with an inability to listen to their bodies and that this problem is intimately linked to neoliberal ideology.In today's neoliberal societies, the relation to the body becomes mostly instrumental.The body becomes something that needs to be fixed in order to correspond to images of perfection.The other side of bodily existence-the body as a site of vulnerabilitybecomes repressed.
The relation to fantasy is also compromised.Guattari denounces 'censorship and contention in the name of great moral principles ' (2014, p. 57).Although fantasy potentially has the ability to singularize subjects, there is rather 'an equalized subjectivity, with standardized fantasies and massive consumption of infantilizing reassurances ' ( 2009a , p. 202).
In the second register of social ecology, Guattari describes how infantilized subjectivities are cut off from each other and the social more broadly: 'les systèmes idéologiques actuels referment le rapport à l'autre, murent le moi sur le moi …' (2018, p. 282).neoliberal ideology propagates a subjectivity that is atomic and individual, rather than a 'collective assemblage of enunciation' (see Deleuze & Parnet, 2007 , p. 51).
Moreover, since infantilization goes hand in hand with homogenization, the disagreements essential to democratic deliberation fall away.Guattari therefore writes: 'Rather than looking for a stupefying and infantilizing consensus, it will be a question in the future of cultivating a dissensus and the singular production of existence ' (2014, p. 50).
Although Guattari mainly sees a decline of the dissensus required for democratic politics, I believe that nowadays the infantilization of the social ecology also affects democratic deliberation in a different way.The 'walling up of the ego' severs the ties between people and leads to isolated subjects.As a consequence, the isolated subject is more at risk of becoming ensnared in a 'bubble' of opinions without any critical alternatives.This is why we see today that infantilization produces a mass of homogenized subjectivities, yet also fringes of radicalized isolated individuals.
Finally, in the third ecology of the environment, the 'walling up of the ego' also entails a lack of vulnerability to events.In a different kind of flight from finitude, the individual shields itself from being truly affected by its surroundings.Events are allowed to occur, but only insofar as they do not undo the individual's mode of life or self-understanding.The events do not open up new becomings, since the individual is too concerned with its fixed being.
This denial of subjectivity's dependence on exteriority also manifests itself as the inability to face up to the exploitation of the earth.Waste, pollution and extinction are kept at a distance.Again, this is due both to an unwillingness of the infantilized subject to face the far-reaching consequences of its mode of living and to the efforts of multinationals to conceal the death and destruction caused by consumerist capitalism. 7 Before I turn to the concept of becoming-child that serves to think possibilities for resistance, I will first investigate in more detail Deleuze and Guattari's opposition of becoming-child to childhood memories (Deleuze & Guattari, 1986, p. 78, 2013 , pp. 164, 294).This serves to present a more complete account of childhood in Deleuze and Guattari's work and to prevent misunderstandings in my presentation of the concept of becoming-child below.
Reminiscing and working with childhood memory is a regression, rather than a becoming.It is a way of relating to one's childhood that Guattari also seems to subsume under infantilization, 8 but it is a different process than I elaborated above.Guattari argues that this regression that aims to 'recapture' childhood through memories results in 'a "powerless" representation of childhood, a recollected, mythical, and sheltered childhood, negative of the present intensities and without any connection to the positive aspects of childhood ' (2008, p. 134).As in the processes of infantilization I developed above, a 'walling up of the ego' occurs here, but now by means of fixing a representation of 'the child within.'This entails two processes that I term personalization and interiorization.Personalization means that childhood is solely conceived as a personal childhood, that is my childhood.Interiorization means that the remainder of childhood is conceived as being inside, that is as inner childhood. 9 Deleuze and Guattari are thinking of a specific target when criticizing personalization and interiorization: Freudian psychoanalysis.Rather than actually liberating analysands, they argue that it chains them to a narrow understanding of their childhood framed in oedipal terms.The effect is instead a normalization that represses the potentials for an escape from oppressive structures and leads to guilt and neurosis. 10As they summarize in Anti-Oedipus : The dirty little secret, in place of the wide open spaces glimpsed for a moment.The familialist reduction, in place of the drift of desire.In place of the great decoded flows, little streams recoded in mommy's bed.Interiority in place of a new relationship with the outside.Throughout psychoanalysis, the discourse of bad conscience and guilt always rises up and finds its nourishment-what is called being cured.(1983, p. 270) But Guattari's remarks on the 'powerless representation of childhood' also imply that there is a different way that does not lock childhood away in a personal interiority, a way that can free the 'positive aspects of childhood.'This other way is conceptualized as becoming-child.

Becoming-Child
Thus far, I have described how infantilization homogenizes subjectivity and fixes it into standardized modes of being.So how can we free up the positive aspects of childhood to which Guattari refers?This does not call for remembrance, but rather for forgetting.Deleuze and Guattari write: 'Becoming is an antimemory ' (2013 , p. 294).Becoming-child is a positive forgetting 11 that lessens the bonds with the past in order to free unforeseen possibilities.The childhood in becoming-child is not a history or memory but rather-in nietzsche's words-'innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a wheel rolling out of itself, a first movement, a sacred yes-saying' (nietzsche, 2006 , p. 17).
Deleuze and Guattari develop becoming-child in opposition to what I've termed the personalization and interiorization of childhood.Their critique of personalization entails that becoming-child is not about me as a child or my childhood, but rather about a child or a childhood.They approvingly cite Virgiana Woolf's Orlando where she writes: 'This will be childhood, but it must not be my childhood,' (Deleuze & Guattari, 2013, p. 294).In his interviews with claire Parnet, Deleuze asserts that it is not at all interesting who he was as a child, but rather that he was a child amongst others, 'un enfant quelconque.'He further specifies the childhood of becoming-child as 'enfance du monde, enfance d'un monde' to stress that childhood should not be attributed solely to the individual (Deleuze & Parnet, 2020 ).
This last remark also reveals a critique of interiorization.Deleuze and Guattari differ here from popular discourses on the liberation of the inner child.Becoming-child is not 'un enfant qui coexiste en nous' as liane Mozère ( 2007 , p. 4) writes in her discussion of becoming-child, nor is it about unleashing 'dormant child particles within oneself' (Zehavi, 2020 , p. 58).Deleuze and Guattari do not write that a child 'coexiste en nous' but rather that it 'coexiste avec nous' ( 1980 , p. 360).They stress the relation of subjectivity to the outside, be it to history, concrete others or to the vast outside of the cosmos.The interiorization of childhood is a 'walling up' rather than an opening up.
In sum, I have argued that becoming-child is not a childhood memory, nor a childhood history.It is not an attribute or memory of the individual, nor is it located in a person's interiority.But what then is a positive explication of becoming-child?unfortunately, as Zehavi notes, the concept 'has received relatively little attention' and 'consequently, it remains quite obscure, both in Deleuze's writings and in scholarly commentary' (2020, p. 58).In the remainder of this section, I will elaborate the notion of becoming-child by means of three related concepts: potentiality, affectivity and situation.After this explication, I will problematize both the concept of infantilization and the concept of becoming-child as one-sided.The previous section on infantilization revealed the dangers of recurrences of childhood.Therefore, becoming-child is not simply liberating, but rather highly ambiguous.I will argue that Deleuze and Guattari already saw this ambiguity, and that they have warned about the pitfalls of univocally applauding becoming-child.
Becoming-child is first of all potentialization.childhood, understood as being before formation, is potentiality of forms.consider for example language acquisition.Daniel Heller-Roazen ( 2005 , pp. 9-12) writes how babbling infants are capable of producing any sound of human language, but upon learning to speak they lose this ability in order to learn only one specific language with its specific sounds.Becoming-child with regard to language would mean inserting this potentiality back into it.This does not mean learning a second language and thereby acquiring another form next to the native form, but rather opening up the existing form and thus introducing a certain formlessness into it.This formlessness appears as what Deleuze called 'a kind of foreign language within language, … a becoming-other of language, a minorization of this major language, a delirium that takes it off ' (1998, pp. 15-16). 12 But the childhood aimed at in becoming-child has a potentiality more general than just potentiality in language.Deleuze and Guattari write in A Thousand Plateaus: ' … it is as though, independent of the evolution carrying them toward adulthood, there were room in the child for other becomings, "other contemporaneous possibilities" that are not regressions but creative involutions… ' (2013, p. 273).not yet fully educated in the general norms and behaviors of adult society, children can sometimes act in completely unexpected new ways and thereby challenge prevailing norms (Hickey-Moody, 2013 , p. 280).Becoming-child means finding this attitude of experimentation, in adult life as well (Deleuze & Guattari, 2013 , p. 164). 13Guattari in particular emphasizes again and again that experimentation and creative new ways of living are imperative (2014,2018).
This potentialization is co-originary with affectivity.Hickey-Moody (2013, p. 282) explains: Rather than a chronological bracket or developmental state, becoming-child is a set of affects and capacities to be affected which can be activated at any stage of life.… [childhood] is an affective capacity or capacity to be affected, both positively and negativity, to grow and connect in new ways (positive affect) and to be eroded by others around oneself (sad affect).
children can be extremely sensitive to their environment and all the kinds of objects and events in it.consider how different a walk from home to school proceeds for a child on the one hand and for the parent or guardian on the other hand.The parent or guardian is usually focused on efficiently reaching the destination.Meanwhile, the child is responding to all kinds of events and lines of flight that occur along the way: a human-animal encounter when someone is walking their dog, a nice-looking rock or stick on the ground which crystallizes seemingly infinite possibilities, a hidden alleyway with unknown destinations.It is this kind of affectivity that is aimed at in becoming-child.As I argued above, becoming-child is not about emitting forces from 'the child within' but rather about entering into a relation with a childhood that is not simply of the individual but rather of the world or of the event. 14Becoming-child is an act by a collective assemblage of enunciation, rather than by a subject.Where infantilization is characterized by a diminished affectivity, becoming-child is rather allowing oneself to be affected and be driven by affects.
The potentialization that occurs via an affective capacity is always a situated potentialization.Deleuze and Guattari write in an elaboration on childhood blocks: 'a vector of deterritorialization is in no way indeterminate; it is directly plugged into the molecular levels, and the more deterritorialized it is, the stronger is the contact …' (2013, p. 294).This might seem at odds with my elaboration of potentiality above, where I explicated potentiality precisely as indeterminate.
However, this apparent contradiction can be resolved by understanding this potentiality as a situated singular potentiality.This means that-although it is not determined by representations or concepts-it is not a general empty indeterminacy because it is felt in a singular encounter.Deleuze and Guattari therefore stress that there is no one fixed strategy for deterritorialization; it must be 'each time in a way adapted to the "case" in question ' ( 1983 , p. 339).

The risk of becoming-child
The liberation inherent in becoming-child is therefore ambivalent or more precise: indeterminate.It opens up.It is only determined by what happens next.What follows on the breakthrough makes it liberating or stupefying.Deterritorialization, lines of flight and becoming-child should therefore not be promoted simply as such (see Ruti 2017 , 32).So when Zehavi writes that 'once the majoritarian politics of the parent-function is undone by the minoritarian micropolitics of becoming-child, the Spinozist metaphysical child -the expert explorer of milieus, the adept and prolific becomer -can resurface' (2020, p. 61), I propose to read 'can' as designating contingency.This liberating childhood might resurface, but Zehavi ignores the risk of destructive effects, as in the process of infantilization I explicated above.Although it sometimes seems that Deleuze and Guattari also fall prey to this ignorance, I will argue that they do see the dangers and risks.
Deleuze and Guattari conceptualize the risk inherent in deterritorialization with the notions of breakthrough and collapse.The breakthrough opens up rigid structures or received understandings and modes of life.This is thus a first requirement for any change whatsoever.In this sense, it denotes deterritorialization.However, the breakthrough can lead to a collapse which implodes the creativity that the breakthrough unleashed.This is why Guattari writes in his conceptualization of ecological praxes: 'as experiments in the suspension of meaning they are risky, as there is the possibility of a violent deterritorialization which would destroy the assemblage of subjectification ' (2014, p. 45).I examined a kind of this destruction above as infantilization.
As another example, Guattari names the revolutionary left in Italy in the 80's.Although revolutionary forces were awakened, the movement succumbed to violence and terrorism and thus reversed liberating power into its opposite.on the individual level, Deleuze names amongst others Van Gogh and Antonin Artaud.Both succeeded in breaking through established modes of art and testified to possibilities hitherto unimaginable, but both also fell victim to episodes of psychosis and suffering.Deleuze summarizes: 'the "breakthrough" and the collapse are two different moments.But it would be irresponsible to ignore the danger of collapse in these processes.Even if the risk is perhaps worthwhile' (quoted in : Guattari 2008 , 66). 15  In order to minimize the chance of collapse, caution is required.Deleuze affirms this when he quotes from one of Van Gogh's letters where he says that it is a question of breaking through a wall.Deleuze adds: 'But breaking through a wall is very, very difficult, and if it's done too brutally then you crumble, you fall, you collapse' (p.65).liberation is not achieved by unthinkingly plunging into deterritorializing practices.Deleuze and Guattari write: 'Staying stratifiedorganized, signified, subjected -is not the worst that can happen; the worst that can happen is if you throw the strata into demented or suicidal collapse, which brings them back down on us heavier than ever ' (2013, p. 161).
In today's capitalist consumerist context, we can add to this the danger of only further strengthening capitalism by accelerating its flows and circulations.As other thinkers have remarked, a call for deterritorialization as such appears today as fully in agreement with capitalism rather than as a call for resistance (see for example : Dufour, 2008 , p. 11).Perhaps this is something that Guattari saw better than Deleuze, and to which he paid more attention in the works he published after A Thousand Plateaus and Kafka.Where their coauthored works breathe a rebellious atmosphere indebted to May '68 that sees in the potentiality and affectivity of childhood a source for liberation, Guattari warned from The Three Ecologies (first published in 1989) onwards for the dangers of infantilization, where a new more flexible capitalism appropriates the remainders of childhood for its own strengthening and continuation.
So what should we do?First, as is clear from my reference to the flexibility of capitalism just now, you have to be patient.Guattari writes, again about the fate of the left in Italy: 'A more gentle deterritorialization, however, might enable the assemblages to evolve in a constructive, processual fashion ' (2014, p. 45).In Anti-Oedipus, it says: 'schizoanalysis must proceed as quickly as possible, but it can also proceed only with great patience, great care ' (1983, p. 318).This is connected to the necessarily situated aspect of becoming-child.There is a right time for becoming-child, which sometimes means you have to wait.The time of childhood is not only aion (Hickey-Moody, 2013, p. 273; see also: Kennedy & Kohan, 2016), but kairos as well.This is also why Guattari stresses that 'ecological praxes strive to scout out the potential vectors of subjectification and singularization at each partial existential locus ' (2014, p. 45).In other words: not every situation is suited for practices of becoming-child, so we must first find or invent situations where the chances of infantilization are low.Experimentation is imperative, but this must proceed with care to prevent unknowingly playing into the hands of a system that seeks to extract the childhood potential for its own goals.In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari therefore emphasize that we must proceed step by step: 'lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continuums of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times ' (2013, p. 161).
In an example in A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari show that sometimes a very focused and minimal gesture succeeds better in liberating childhood than completely letting go.With regard to the appraisal of children's drawings, they write: 'Sometimes one overdoes it, puts too much in, works with a jumble of lines and sounds ' (2013, p. 343).The result is not becoming-child as Deleuze and Guattari understand it, but rather a childishness devoid of its positive aspects.Again, this shows that becoming-child is not about losing control and letting it all out.Rather, Deleuze and Guattari write of 'the sobriety of a becoming-child' (p.343, see also : Deleuze & Guattari, 1986, p. 79).Sobriety, patience and care are therefore the conditions of becoming-child, precisely in order to minimize the chances of infantilization and to maximize the chance of a true liberation.
In his elaboration of childhood in Deleuze's works, René ten Bos summarizes the main condition for what I call becoming-child as opposed to infantilization in clear terms: 'one must keep thinking ' (2009, p. 61).Thinking in the proper sense requires opening oneself up to a certain childhood.In the words of Deleuze's colleague Jean-François lyotard: 'you cannot open up a question without leaving yourself open to it.you cannot scrutinize a "subject" … without being scrutinized by it.you cannot do any of these things without renewing ties with the season of childhood, the season of the mind's possibilities ' ( 1993 , p. 100).
letting yourself be scrutinized also entails taking a risk.Precisely because becoming-child entails affectivity, a getting acted upon, a negative outcome can never be warded off for certain.Perhaps the only thing we can do is foster favorable conditions.However, the alternative is remaining in the established modes of living and thought that are so detrimental to ourselves, our social relations and the environment.So indeed, as Deleuze says: 'the risk is perhaps worthwhile' (quoted in : Guattari, 2008, p. 66).

Conclusion
I began this article by noting the opposing ways in which today's crisis in education is theorized.on the one hand, as Stiegler writes, the crisis consists in infantilization understood as remaining in a position of childhood.This childhood cannot be fully left behind; Stiegler himself writes that 'we can never become completely mature ' (2010, p. 87).But it does allow for more or less room, and Stiegler sees that education is losing grip on children, which means they no longer get the chance to proceed toward more maturity.Rather they become increasingly ensnared in the capitalist attention economy.on the other hand, other philosophers of education have called for education that aims at freeing room for childhood and remainders of childhood, not as regression but rather as source of creativity and potential for change.
I investigated this opposition by means of a reading of the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.Their work distinguishes itself in that it contains both positive and negative evaluations of remainders of childhood.The negative aspects are conceptualized as infantilization; the positive aspects as becoming-child.
Infantilization is primarily operative in Guattari's single-authored works.He understands it as a homogenization of subjectivity.The singularity of each individual and each situation is repressed in favor of standardized modes of living and thinking.This requires shutting oneself off from the outside, be it the unknown in the life of the mind, other people in social relations, or the environment.Guattari summarized this as a walling in of the I (2018, p. 282).
Becoming-child is also opposed to remembering childhood.childhood memories fix a past, while becoming-child liberates a future.contrary to walling in the I, becoming-child aims at relating to the outside.An important aspect of this concept that is misunderstood in different commentaries (Mozère, 2007;Zehavi, 2020) is that childhood is thus no longer thought as personalized and interiorized.This is clear in for example Deleuze and Guattari's quote from Virginia Woolf: 'it would be childhood, but not my childhood.'In the interviews with claire Parnet, Deleuze sharply opposes the remembrance of personal childhood to relating to what he terms 'a childhood of a world.'The important difference is the indeterminate singular a instead of the determinate personal my.I also stressed that Deleuze and Guattari write of 'a childhood that coexists with us' rather than Mozère's 'a childhood that coexists within us.'However, this indeterminate 'a' does not mean that becoming-child is a general empty potentiality.Deleuze and Guattari both emphasize the situatedness of becoming.This situatedness translates into the difficulty of promoting becoming-child as such.Rather, there is a right time for opening up to childhood.It is therefore sometimes necessary to wait and to proceed with caution.By proceeding with care, the chances of infantilization can perhaps be minimized, while the chance for a truly liberating becoming-child increases.However, the constitutive aspect of opening oneself up, of allowing oneself to be affected, entails that the outcome is never fully in one's control.This is why I propose to understand becoming-child as risky.
Many different outcomes are possible.In this article I only elaborated two main different modes: (1) Taking up remainders of childhood, but without freeing up its liberating forces.This is what Guattari terms infantilization.(2) Giving oneself over to childhood and its liberating potentials with care and thought.It is only this last mode that Deleuze and Guattari conceptualize as becoming-child.Apart from these outcomes, one could also investigate how other modes of accounting for remainders of childhood can be theorized in a Deleuzo-Guattarian framework.For example, I have not investigated the mode of subjectivity that results from negating and repressing remainders of childhood altogether.
My main thesis in this article is that taking up remainders or recurrences of childhood can happen in two main modes: infantilization and becoming-child.Trying to take up relations with remainders of childhood therefore entails a constitutive risk: if we want to have a chance at freeing liberating forces we have to allow ourselves to be affected, but this immediately makes us vulnerable to the possibility of infantilization and collapse.The one necessarily comes with the other.
What then is our strategy in today's battle for intelligence?It is clear that educational philosophy must move beyond a one-sided call for a new maturity such as Stiegler's, and take into account the potentials of becoming-child.However, I also argued that the risk of infantilization cannot be warded off completely.But, as Deleuze said, the risk is perhaps worthwhile.