This article represents four emergences through which to explore the significance of lifelong learning. Drawing in particular on complexity theory and actor-network theory, it seeks to develop an understanding of the reductions and emergences, and purifications and translations to which lifelong learning is subject. To do this, the article also seeks to mobilise the logic of the rhizome as articulated by Deleuze and Guattari. As such, it seeks to add further enactments of lifelong learning to those that already exist.