Timely Intro

As with the retail world, the academic editing world operates a good six to nine months ahead of schedule. Stores start displaying winter clothes in the middle of summer, and journals are delicately pieced together a long time before any scholar picks them up to read. As my position of co-editor wraps up, time is what pervades my thoughts as I introduce this special edition of VAR, written and signed off in a time of political elections, read by you in a time when who became the next president of the United States is old news. Has the relevancy of the articles changed, in Time? [Un]time? Unhinged from time?

To return to and take liberty with stretching the opening analogy, I'd like to think jan, Jason, and I are a|head of time. We are our own time. We each have our own duration as we are an assemblage of heterogeneous (co)editing elements that have formed connections: operating distinctly; building off one another; united by desire. Our desire is to present to you Deleuze|Guattari, in the words of various authors, for art, for education, for art and its education. It is way past time to do this.

It's no great secret that Deleuze|Guattari are not accepted by the many in the field of art education. Deleuze|Guattari are often seen as difficult, tedious, a passing fancy, or, perhaps most unfortunately, unapproachable or unusable. I disagree. I could wax philosophical to build up my argument of why I disagree, but that would waste my time as we would fight over the truths behind it. I'm not one to do that. I'd rather spend my time in/of/as philosophy. Like Deleuze|Guattari, I believe "philosophy is not a matter of description or explanation. 'Philosophy does not consist in knowing and is not inspired by truth. Rather, it is categories like Interesting, Remarkable, or Important that determine its success or failure.' Philosophy is . . . practical and normative" (May, 2003, p. 140). So for me and Deleuze, philosophy does not set itself up as that which is right, or the initiator of rules by which to live life. Instead, philosophy contributes to our way of life through being interesting, remarkable, or important—by being novel or different and instigating new ways of looking at things. Philosophy motivates us to move/ think in directions/ways that we may not have considered prior, to explore new kinds of thoughts and relations . . . Being challenged to think differently is not a passing fancy, and it is what we present to you today; not without reservations, as jan notes; and not without propositions for going forward, as Jason offers . . . We thank you for your time when reading this collection.