Wounds and reinscriptions: schools, sexualities and performative subjects

The participation of the girls is significant. Through their watching, appreciation, and
questions the girls assure the immediate discursive frame through which Scott’s practices
are made meaningful. In so doing they collaborate with his reinscription of the
intelligibility, legitimacy, and desirability of (a/his) gay identity. Scott has the ‘girls’ and
the ‘gifts’ that McInnes and Couch (2001) suggest contribute to an acceptable
(un)masculinity in school contexts.

Scott’s practices, then, potentially interrupt the wounded homosexual which Daniel’s
comment cited and inscribed as well as provisionally reinscribing gay again differently.
Yet Scott’s practices cite the well-rehearsed gay artiste, the excess and theatricality of a
particular mode of homosexuality. This is a mode of homosexual Otherness that is
embraced by popular and broader culture. And yet this embrace is also an act of
containment, constraining the possibilities for further homosexual identities. Further,
ballet confirms the lack of masculinity implicit in Daniel’s injurious performative, and in
turn inscribes once again Daniel’s hetero-masculinity. As such, this is a fragile
reinscription.

In Scene 2 of Episode 2, The exchange between Ian and Josh appears to effect a
provisional shift from the injurious inscription of denigrated homosexual seen in Episode
1, to the inscription of a legitimate gay identity. It is noteworthy that the exchange
proceeds from a joke shared with a broader group of students about the alleged
heterosexual relationship between two teachers. That hetero-sex provides a point of

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