assertion that discourses can be made to function in contexts where they have not
belonged and to take on non-ordinary meanings is demonstrated here. As such, mundane
school practices are shown to be sites of a deconstructive politics of hegemony (Butler
1997a). That the threat of restoration of normative meanings - as seen in the episodes
discussed - is intrinsic to such a politics does not negate its significance. Rather, it
underscores the altered perametres for (discursive) agency suggested by this conceptual
framework.
The analysis within this paper also illustrates the impossibility, in the current discursive
context, of separating gender and sexuality. As Butler (1999) has noted, Foucault’s call to
replace sex-desire with bodies and pleasures in ways that loosen this connection remains
an important theoretical and political vision. Yet reflecting Butler’s theoretical assertion,
the Episodes analysed here demonstrate the intimacy, the mutual constitution, of gender
and sexuality in contemporary school life. Understanding this intimate connection
between gender and sexuality offers a significant contribution to current discussions of
boys and schooling by revealing how particular hetero-masculinities might come to be
constituted as incommensurate with the ideal, or even acceptable, learner. (See Youdell
(in press) for a discussion of these processes in relation to Black boys).
Finally, the work offered here highlights the limits of equal rights and anti-discrimination
based policies and interventions. It does this by indicating the mundane, day-to-day
constitutive practices that oppositional and structural politics and policy reform are
unable to penetrate. Understanding these complex performatives suggests that the
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