Wounds and reinscriptions: schools, sexualities and performative subjects

Abstract

Boys in school, homophobia, and forms of masculinity are currently the focus of
significant debate in and about education and schools. Much of this discussion takes as
given the sexual orientation, and therefore sexual identity, of the students of whom it
speaks and mobilizes equal rights discourses on behalf of gay and lesbian students. This
paper offers an alternative view of the school level processes at work around these issues.
The paper takes up Judith Butler’s ongoing engagement with Foucault and her recent
rearticulation of Althusser and Bourdieu to analyse data generated through school
ethnography in Britain and Australia. This analysis details the processes through which
gender and sexual identities are constituted inside schools; illustrates the mutually
constitutive relationship between gender and sexuality in contemporary discursive
frames; and demonstrates how students resist wounded homosexual identities and
constitute legitimate Other selves through their day-to-day practices.

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