cited and inscribed. When he „plays’ at punching Lucy, it is his success and her
exclamation of pain that leads to him to end the „game’. It seems here that Lucy may well
not be consenting to this bodily encounter, that is, it may well be an assault. Lucy’s
response to Stuart is informative. She does not call the teacher or make any other serious
attempt to interrupt Stuart’s hold on her body. This may be indicative of her tacit
awareness that any interruption here will simply be a deferral of Stuart’s „game’ and that
neither she nor the (woman) teacher has the authority within a gender-dominated
discursive field to prevent subsequent re-enactments of this encounter. Furthermore, Lucy
may well be in a double bind here. Her encounter with Stuart underscores and is a further
moment in the constitution of her heterosexual femininity - along with a bruised upper
arm, Lucy provisionally „gains’ desirable heterosexual femininity through this bodily
encounter. This is a moment in Lucy’s ongoing constitution as a viable subject. While the
encounter cites and constitutes the constraints of heterosexual feminine subjection, to
attempt to interrupt Stuart might be to risk this femininity and the subjecthood it confers.
Scenes 1 and 2 demonstrate a complex interaction between intentional, tacit and
unintentional bodily practices. Students may knowingly cite their own and others’ prior
bodies, they may have a practical sense, a tacit awareness, of the potentially performative
force of their bodily practices, or their bodily performatives may be unintentional, cited
and inscribe implicitly. Furthermore, whether bodily practices are deployed intentionally,
with a tacit awareness, or unintentionally, their efficacy is not guaranteed. Bodily
performatives, like linguistic performatives, always run the risk of misfire. These bodily
practices are not somehow inherently female-hetero-feminine or male-hetero-masculine.
Rather, these bodies are designated within these terms through discourse - their meanings
are cited and inscribed. Just as the historicity of discourse is sedimented through its
citation within linguistic practices, so it is sedimented through its citation within bodily
practices.
Naming and making hetero-femininities and the virgin/whore dichotomy
Scene 3: slag
DY (the researcher, mid/late twenties, woman, White)
MARCELLA (year 11 student, girl, African)
MOLLY (year 11 student, girl, White)
JULIET (year 11 student, girl, Mixed-race)
JASMINE (year 11 student, girl, Mixed-race)
Sitting in a group around a table in the year base while the rest of the tutor group
are in a PSE lesson. The group are discussing SU LIN, a Chinese girl in the tutor