This proposal aims to deepen the theoretical understanding of subjectivity in education and explore how educational experiences shape its emergence. Subject, as commonly understood in the educational discourse, often focuses on the “self” and “I”, emphasizing how one might exist as the agent of one’s own life. Yet, less attention has been given to how subjectivity emerges and what it ought to be (Todd, 2023). In this regard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s work could perhaps offers some important inspirations for discussion. For them, subjectivity is continually being produced, transformed, and assembled within capitalism (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983). Subjectivity thus is not a unified Self but “a product of individuals, groups, and institutions” (Guattari, 2000, p. 1), with a polyphonic, multicentred, heterogeneous character (Guattari, 1995). Subjectivity thus includes non- and pre-personal dimensions, shaped by flows of desire that exceed individual consciousness. The task, then, is not to reclaim an authentic self, but to understand the dynamic processes through which subjectivity takes form. As Guattari writes:

Thus, on the one hand there is the infantilization of the production of subjectivity, with the intense binarization of messages, uniformization and unidimensionization of relations to the world and, on the other, expansion of other non-denotative functions of language: the composition of rhythms and the unprecedented production of relations to the world. (Guattari, 2009, p. 74)

As the literature on educationalization suggests, education functions as a vital process in the formation of modern subjects, where social issues once framed as economic, political, or ethical are rearticulated in the educational discursive framework (Depaepe, 1997; Fendler, 2018). The subject thus becomes a battleground between the homogenizing power of capitalism and heterogeneity, mediated through mechanisms of social subjection and machinic enslavement (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983; Lazzarato, 2014). Countering these mechanisms, Deleuze and Guattari developed concepts that respond to and exceed dominant regimes of subjectivation. This proposal will also particularly focus on notions from Guattari’s work, such as metamodelization and the ethico-aesthetic paradigm, to articulate a more nuanced understanding of subjectivity’s capacity to invent new assemblages of meaning and modes of existence. Against this backdrop, this proposal asks: What does education uniquely possess that renders it reducible to the capitalist machine? What does it mean to be “educated”, instead of “educationalized”? What does education offer in the (re-)invention and (re-)singularization of subjectivity? 

On the other hand, this proposal incorporates the theoretical perspective of curriculum as a crucial conceptual link between education and subjectivity. Curriculum theory, having undergone multiple transformation, most notably through the Reconceptualist movement in the U.S. context (Pinar, 1975, 2011, 2022), continues to evolve in its understanding of education. Curriculum theorizing entails “a form of practical-theoretical reason” (Pinar, 2004, p. 25) that rethinks experience and representation, treating curriculum as “texts, events, encounters, and experiences” that provoke pause, second thoughts, and the unlearning of memories that entangle us (Phelan, 2015, p. 5). In this sense, curriculum becomes a “complicated conversation,” an interdisciplinary ethical, political, and aesthetic undertaking that engages the entanglements of human agency, responsibility, society, and historical moments in relation to subjectivity. From this standpoint, curriculum theory is particularly suited to addressing the emergence of the “educated,” rather than the merely “educationalized,” subject. Integrating curriculum theory will thus be invaluable for illuminating the distinctive values that education holds for the shaping of subjectivity.

To summarize, this proposal will be guided by the following two research questions:

1. What is distinctive about education in the production of subjectivity today?

2. In the Hong Kong context, how does schooling creates conditions for the invention and singularization of students’ subjectivities?

This proposal situates the discussion of subjectivity in education within the context of Hong Kong as a case, chosen for both its personal significance and its unique historical, cultural, political, and social conditions. Two additional dimensions further inform this inquiry: the global circulation of semio-capitalism (Berardi, 2015; Gensoko, 2012; Guattari, 2009), a form of capitalism that intensifies processes of subjectivation through the disintegration of traditional semiotic systems amid technological and digital transformations, and the regional influence of New-Confucianism in Hong Kong (Chan, 2011; Stanchina, 2025; Zhang, 2023), offering ethical and spiritual insights into the production of subjectivity. One part of this contextualization is an empirical study investigating how schooling in Hong Kong might create conditions for the production of subjectivity while resisting dominant socio-political machines such as meritocratic reproduction, authoritarian neoliberalism and semio-capitalist commodification. This study asks how schools act as contested spaces for interrupting dominant machinery and fostering the polyphonic subjectivities of students, in helping students recognize and navigate these forces creatively and ethically through their educational experience. Obviously, this could not be achieved without the presence of teachers, in the establishment of a relationship with students for ethical judgments and decision for the educational good for students. The singularity of teacher’s subjectivity, concerning teacher’s “freedom of expression, thought, and action” (Phelan, 2015, p. 4) in their capacity to constantly act against the homogenizing subjectivation forces, becomes one of the crucial factors in giving rise to the student’s singularity. Therefore, teacher’s subjectivity will be part of the study to enrich the understanding. Sharing between the student’s and teacher’s subjectivity is thus the curriculum, as experienced by both sides in the lived time of study and teaching. Through the curriculum, the pertinent questions about education are constantly visited, in thinking about “what knowledge is of most worth, to what purposes, and in whose interests?” (Phelan, 2015, p. 9). The study adopts a case study design (Yin, 2014) to focus on a single secondary school (K7-K12) in Hong Kong serving predominantly low-income students, foregrounding the special need to rethink subjectivity under stratified and constraining conditions for the underprivileged. Data will be gathered mainly through three ways: (1) sustained observation of classrooms, school culture, spatial and temporal organization, and relational practices; (2) semi-structured interviews with school leaders, teachers, and students; and (3) analysis of school documents and artefacts.

In response to the first research question, this proposal argues that understanding subjectivity as plural and polyphonic, rather than solely as an individual self, is crucial for education. Subjectivity is not simply something that resides “inside” the learner, but a production that emerges through complex, collective processes. Drawing on Guattari’s (1995) work on institutional psychotherapy, education can be reconceived less as a mechanism for remodelling students’ subjectivities to fit pre-given norms and more as the creation of “local centres for collective subjectivation,” oriented toward “a production sui generis” (p. 6). In this view, education should expose students to “new universes” of meaning and experience, enabling resingularization out of repetitive impasses. This aligns with Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic paradigm, where subjectivity is formed through the invention of new modalities, analogous to artistic creation, opening possibilities for autonomy or “autopoiesis” (Guattari, 1995, p. 7). Education thus becomes a distinctive space-time for encounters with others and with the world, where “complexes of subjectivation” arise through multiple exchanges between individuals, groups, and institutional-machinic arrangements (Guattari, 1995, p. 7). This orientation directly connects to questions of educational experience and of “what knowledge is of most worth,” an area where curriculum theory offers significant resources. To the second research question, the complex assemblages, and tensions between homogenizing and heterogenizing forms of subjectivity, will be the focus of the case of schooling in Hong Kong, to reveal how global and local historical, political, and cultural conditions intersect in the production, and how educators could navigate through the constraining condition to preserve the uniqueness of education for an ethical and aesthetic way of life. While grounded in Hong Kong, the insights are intended to resonate with the wider international perspectives against regimes of control.

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