Mathematics and its other: (dis)locating the feminine

Abstract

In this article, the author examines how school mathematics maps itself onto the body, delineating the contours of a gendered learner. The author draws on Judith Butler to discuss the process by which school mathematics contributes to the stabilising/legitimating of a cultural arbitrary like gender, and how mathematics inscribes otherness onto the feminine. A student narrative entitled ‘Im/perfect Other’ is offered as a form of disruptive writing that might provisionally trouble or unfix the binary between the feminine and mathematics. The focus of the narrative is on the passionate attachment to mastery and submission in/through school mathematics, and the possibility of an emergent autonomy erupting through and against the process of subjectification.

Keywords:

• mathematics
• gender
• subject position
• identity
• narrative

Notes

1. This is only one of the many equivalent forms for the Axiom of Choice.

2. Stuart Hall (1986) suggests that we might perform ‘arbitrary closures’ on our contingent identity, allowing one to frame, in the passing of a moment, the diverse and conflicting affiliations that produce our sense of self.