Sustaining Sustainability: The Pedagogical Drift of Art Research and Practice

In this article, the philosophical theories of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari are juxtaposed with the research and practice of environmental artists Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison in order to explore and examine correspondences between their respective ways of thinking and performing sustainability. The complex and contradictory alliances and movements of Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic assemblage, body without organs, and schizo-analysis are compared with the dynamic plurality of conversational drift, an altruistic process of environmental discourse that the Harrisons’ perform in and through their work in collaboration with leading experts in the sciences, ecology, the arts, public policy, and their most important interlocutor, the earth and its biologically diverse characteristics.