Queer provocations! Exploring queerly informed disruptive pedagogies within feminist community-higher-education landscapes

Abstract

Deborah Britzman, over 15 years ago in her insightful essay “Is There a Queer Pedagogy? Or Stop Thinking Straight”, posed questions that continue to resonate (Britzman, Deborah P. 1998. Curriculum: Toward New Identities, edited by William Pinar, 211. New York: Routledge). What if lesbian and gay theories were understood as offering a way to rethink the very grounds of knowledge and pedagogy in education? And, conceptually speaking, what is required to refuse the unremarked and obdurately unremarkable straight educational curriculum? That these remain provocative questions for educators speaks to the reality that ‘heteronormativity is still a (spatial!) structure that conceals, denies and erases’ (Brown, Gavin, and Kath Browne. 2011. “Sedgwick’s Geographies: Touching Space.” Progress in Human Geography 35 (1): 125). This article offers a consideration of norm-challenging ‘disruptive’ pedagogies within a particular context of feminist community-based Irish higher education. I ask how can feminist empowerment education look to, and draw from, the destabilising potential of queer to advance its commitment to ‘disruptive’ pedagogies (Zemblyas, Michalinos, and Megan Boler, eds. 2002. “On the Spirit of Patriotism: Challenges of a ‘Pedagogy of Discomfort’.” Teachers College Record On-line, 10, from Special Issue on Education and September 11 (http://tcrecord.org)). To ground this particular exploration I re-consider four elements of Megan Boler’s seminal work on pedagogies of discomfort: the imaginary; critical reflection; emotions; and a call to action.

Keywords:

• pedagogy
• discomfort
• disruption
• heteronormativity
• community higher education

Notes on contributor

Dr Aideen Quilty is director of the Women's Studies Outreach Programme at the School of Social Policy, Social Work and Social Justice, UCD. She locates her community, undergraduate and post-graduate teaching as a form of critical civic practice and is committed to promoting educational access and participation for traditionally under-represented groups within Higher Education. Her most recent research seeks to consider feminist, queer and spatial theories within the context of pedagogic interrogation and development.

Notes

1. The notion of disruption I am interrogating here reflects more a sense of the embodied out of place-ness and norm-challenging educational intent of queer than the disruptions increasingly associated with technological and teaching and learning innovations that seek to challenge traditional teacher–student relationships (see Hedberg 2011; Anderson and McGreal 2012; Hutchings and Quinney 2015)

2. In 2015, Ireland became the first country to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote.

3. Lesbian Studies Queer Culture, UCD (1999–2005) represents a notable exception. It represents an example of an LGBTQ Irish specific programme influenced by feminism, queer, women’s studies and community education.

4. It is worthwhile restating the now common assertion that there is no ‘queer’ theory in the singular, only many different voices and sometimes overlapping, sometimes divergent perspectives that can loosely be called ‘queer theories’ (Hall 2002).