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The role of fantasy in understanding reality: A review of The Queer Art of Failure
Abstract
The Queer Art of Failure considers ways of being, knowing, and understanding that are outside conventional understandings of success and are placed under the collective heading of failure. These concepts consider and theorize representations of cultural aspects of gender and gendered behavior. Queer theory analyzes how these behaviors are disrupted and reworded. Overall, the book questions conventional signifiers of success and focuses on how aspects of the negative—for example, forgetting and stupidity—can be reinterpreted through a positive lens. Examples are taken from the world of animation, film, and art to exemplify messages and ideas about the real world.
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Recent feminist theorizing has pointed to a `resurgent patriarchy' within neo-liberal postfeminist times, which re-orders and restabilizes the heterosexual matrix through a politics of `postfeminist masquerade' demanded of girls and women (McRobbie). This paper seeks to complicate this thesis, exploring the regulation and rupture of Butler's `heterosexual matrix' as a complex performative politics through which girls' conflictual relationships with themselves, and other girls and boys are staged and through which dominant versions of tweenage and teenage femininity are reinscribed but also reworked, in race and class specific ways. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's powerful conceptual repertoire for disrupting Oedipal logics in Anti-Oedipus, we offer a `molecular mapping', illustrating cracks and ruptures in what is a porous heterosexual matrix, exploring a rhythm of `deterritorializations' and `reterritorializations' of the normative in our respective ethnographic and narrative interviews with girls. We also trace more sustained ruptures of heteronormative femininity drawing upon Deleuze and Guattari's notion of `lines of flight' and Braidotti's concept of `alternative figuration'. We argue ruptures and alternative figurations are not constitutive of total `molar' resistance to norms, but are significant spaces of doing girl differently and crucial to map if we are to perceive the malleability and multiplicity of contemporary girl subjectivities, which exceed heteronormative femininity and phallogocentric desire.
This a study of the process of lesbian and gay identity assumption among university students at one American university campus - the State University of New York, Oneonta. It is argued that participation in this gay and lesbian student group produces a particular construction of identity, one that privileges an essentialist understanding of sexual difference in which a coherent, unified identity is achieved by suppressing more complex, overlapping identities of ethnicity, gender, race and sexuality. Through particular discursive practices public repetitions of coming out - and particular political practices - conventional student political activities - students assume a gay or lesbian identity by 'performing' as lesbians and gays. One result is the reproduction of politically active, community identified gay and lesbian youth, schooled in the methods of insider politics who go on to become volunteer and salaried workers in gay and lesbian community institutions.
How do young people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual (lgb) experience secondary schooling? How do they feel that questions of sexuality are dealt with in the curriculum and do they find this treatment helpful? This article presents the findings of a project that replicated Trenchard and Warren’s 1984 study, Something to tell you. The findings are analysed and some suggestions are made as to changes in lgb‐identifying people’s experiences of schooling from 1984 to 2001. Finally, the article considers these changes in relation to the question of the ‘effect’ of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988.
The ongoing moral panic surrounding adolescent boys continues to cause concern, proving pivotal in popular discourses centring on the ‘problem of youth’. Drawing on ethnographic data from a large co‐educational secondary school, this paper illustrates how school outcomes are adversely affected by working class boys' investments in peer regulated ‘hegemonic’ masculinity. Echoing traditional working class masculine identities formed in relation to the physical requirements of industrial labour, these performances reject associations with activities constructed as ‘feminine’, leading to disaffection with schoolwork. The paper argues that, in a school culture of pervasive homophobia, some teachers paradoxically acted as ‘cultural accomplices’, naturalizing compulsory heterosexuality in engaging alienated and disruptive young men. Moreover, evidence suggests that this is an emerging response to managerialist pressures to ‘continuously improve’ grades by adopting ‘boy friendly’ approaches. This renders questionable strategies predicated on naturalizing assumptions about boys and makes problematic calls for more ‘role models’ without investigating how gendered pedagogies affect schooling for girls and boys.
Individual interviews to solicit secondary school pupils’ (N=99) views of the peer counselling for bullying service in their own school, with a focus on the issue of social support for bullying-related problems, were conducted. Three themes were addressed: (1) willingness to use the service relative to other potential sources of support, (2) preferred gender and age of peer counsellor, and (3) disclosure of using the service to friends. Most participants reported a willingness to use the service, but only around one in 20 would ‘definitely not’ do so. Relative to their willingness to use the service, participants were more willing to solicit help from friends, but less willing to solicit help from their form teacher and siblings. Around a third of participants expressed a preference for seeing a counsellor of a particular gender, and around two thirds expressed a preference for seeing one of a specific relative age. Several significant differences were obtained between girls and boys, and between users and non-users of the service. The results are discussed in terms of the implications for providers of peer counselling for bullying services.
This phenomenological qualitative study explores motivation for citizen participation in a local context by exploring the experiences of Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club advisors from public high schools. Fourteen advisors from one midwestern state were randomly recruited for participation. Inductive and deductive qualitative analyses elucidated themes and subthemes surrounding the motivation for becoming an advisor. Two major themes that emerged were a protective attitude toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth, a personal connection with sexual minority people/issues. It became clear that deciding to become a GSA advisor was not necessarily an easy decision. Therefore, the decision-making process was analyzed, elucidating themes surrounding worries (possible lack of credibility, fear of job loss, and being accused of recruiting youth to the ‘gay lifestyle’) and security (tenure or protections against being fired, and being married). Limitations and implications for future research and practice are discussed. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
In this essay, we argue that stories about one's experiences, and the experiences of others, are the fundamental constituents of human memory, knowledge, and social communication. This argument includes three propositions: 1) Virtually all human knowledge is based on stories constructed around past experiences; 2) New experiences are interpreted in terms of old stories; 3) The content of story memories depends on whether and how they are told to others, and these reconstituted memories form the basis of the individual's "remembered" self". Further, shared story memories within social groups define particular social selves, which may bolster or compete with individual remembered selves.
Few studies have looked explicitly at the use of homophobic pejoratives among young high-schoolers and-not always an easy group to access, nor a comfortable subject to discuss. In this study, 377 14 and 15 year olds listed the pejoratives they heard at school and identified the ones they considered most taboo. As some of the most vitriolic items reported, homophobic pejoratives accounted for 10 per cent of the 6000 items generated. Significantly, however, homophobic verbal abuse was rated much less seriously than either racist abuse or other taboo slang. Boys reported more homophobic pejoratives than girls, but rated them more seriously. As further evidence of the increasingly well-documented daily assault on the psychological health of young homosexual people, this study confirms the prevalence of homophobic verbal abuse in high schools, its particularly aggressive nature, and the relative disregard with which it is used. As a contribution from Language and Communication Research, directions are offered for both sex(uality) education and language education.
Masculinity and power
- A Brittan
Gender, culture and society. Contemporary femininities and masculinities
- M Mac An Ghaill
- C Haywood
Knowledge and memory: The real story Advances in social cognition
- R C Schank
- R P Abelson
Men and masculinities
- S M Whitehead