Sexuality as movement

Abstract

In this article, I rethink the key arguments of my co-authored paper Teaching Pleasure and Danger in Sexuality Education (Author and Co, 2013) by bringing the postmodern logic of critical sexuality education theory into conversation with the relational ontology of new materialism. I begin by rejecting the key problem presented in Author and Co’s (2013) paper as a false problem. This false problem is the drawing of an ‘unqualified line’ between positive and negative sexual experience in sexuality education. Instead, I argue that the actual problem is the initial act of drawing a line to separate sexual experience into a binary. My modification of the problem is an ontological move that allows me to consider sexuality education outside the binaries of negative and positive experience. Elaborating on the ontology problem presented in my paper Teaching Pleasure and Danger in Sexuality Education, I explain new materialism and its key task of realizing the interdependence of dualist terms. Drawing on Bergson and Braidotti’s philosophies of difference, I argue that pushing for sex-positive sexuality education strengthens the sex-negativity in sexuality education. I further critique the logic of negation that structures sexuality education by interrogating the contemporary push for pleasure-based sexuality education. Through this process of rethinking my previous scholarship through new materialist logic, I begin the task of reconfiguring the phallogocentric sexual subject as a subject-in-the-process. The conclusion of this article offers a beginning consideration of sexuality as an act of becoming where forces brought into relationship are entangled, creating a new thing.

Keywords:

• Sexuality education
• pleasure
• new materialism
• difference
• feminist philosophy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In contrast to the usual term interaction, which assumes that there are separate individual agencies that precede their interaction, the notion of intra-action recognizes that distinct agencies do not precede, but rather emerge through, their intra-action (Barad 2007, 33)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vanessa Cameron-Lewis

Vanessa Cameron-Lewis is a doctoral student at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Vanessa’s research interests include the philosophy of education, feminist philosophy, new materialism, and post-colonial studies. Email: [email protected].