Embodying and resisting racialised desires in young people’s sexual imagery

ABSTRACT

Desires may be viewed as emotions that are structuring and structured by social inequalities. This paper examines how sexual desires may surface in everyday classroom interactions. It argues in particular that anti-racist sex education requires not only an awareness of a racialisation of sexuality but also of the sexualisation of race. Focusing on students’ images of desire and a selection of music video stills, the paper investigates in which ways racialised and gendered desires are relevant to students’ imagination – and how they negotiate them in the classroom. Young people’s ethnosexual imaginary reveals an affective investment on the part of adolescents in racialised sexualities in visual culture. In the context of participatory arts-based workshops, the paper analyses how images of racialised desires are transformed into material objects of boundary work. The paper concludes by proposing the re-enactment of young people’s imagery as a means to open up an affective space for negotiating desires and disdain.

KEYWORDS:

• Desire
• racialisation
• embodiment
• anti-racist sex education
• participation
• arts-based research

Acknowledgments

I thank my collaborator in the fieldwork, Rafaela Siegenthaler, for her support and feedback on an earlier version of the paper; Andrea Ploder for her feedback on the draft paper; Marion Thuswald; Elisabeth Sattler; the other members of the Imagining Desires project team; Hella von Unger for jointly reflecting on the workshop dynamics; and Laura Mamo for discussing the fieldwork.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. During New Year’s Eve 2015/16, several cases of sexual assault were reported in large cities in Germany, most of them in Cologne. The perpetrators were said to be newly arrived refugees who allegedly participated in organised forms of sexual assault and robbery. Media coverage of the incidents drew on racist stereotypes and significantly altered public opinion concerning refugees (Hark and Villa 2018).

2. https://imaginingdesires.at/english

3. Parents’ responses made clear they were excited that we would work with their children on such an important topic. In addition, the class teacher and school management were supportive of the research; the class had already participated in two other sex education projects.

4. Another example is provided by the Orientalism and racism present in Disney’s film The Jungle Book, features debated in recent controversies (Clark et al. 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Sparkling Science research programme of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research.