Imagining the homonormative: performative subversion in education for social justice

Abstract

This paper focuses on the operation of heteronormativity in online and face‐to‐face dialogues about sexualities and schooling, and seeks to tease out the means through which this operation is enacted. The data arise from two linked research projects focusing on participants' perceptions and concerns about addressing issues related to sexual orientation in school contexts. Analysis of data from both sources showed that participants' narratives were embedded (often without the participants' recognition) in the heteronormative, through the inscription and reinscription of specific identity categories that fixed heterosexuality as the normative centre. Revisiting these data as a whole, we draw upon Youdell's notion of ‘wounds and reinscrptions’ and Bakhtin's notion of carnivalistic inversion to explore the virtual impossibility of imagining the homonormative. From this exercise we derive important lessons for ourselves as educators and researchers about how offering new imaginaries might enhance the possibilities for social justice and social change.

Keywords:

• sexual orientation
• heteronormativity
• homophobia

Notes

1. Further details about specific methodologies can be found in the works cited in this section.

2. Reference SGS/00853/G.

3. This research was supported by a HEFC‐funded Research Development Fellowship awarded by the University of Sunderland

4. We have assigned pseudonyms to all our interview participants. Participants in the online discussion forums created their own pseudonyms.

5. ESRC reference RES‐062‐23‐0095. More information about the project can be found online (http://www.nooutsiders.sunderland.ac.uk/).

6. Talk by David Mansell (available online at: www.drc.org.uk).