It takes more than two to (multispecies) tango: Queering gender texts in environmental education

ABSTRACT

Using the figuration of queer tango, we conceive this essay as a performance that responds to three Canadian Journal of Environmental Education articles, each of which calls for the creation and circulation of more queer scholarship in environmental education. We explore Vagle's (2015) suggestion of working along the edges and margins of phenomenology using poststructuralist concepts and ideas, with a view to engaging with J. Russell's (2013) phenomenological interpretation of queer theory, with particular reference to Sara Ahmed's (2006) phenomenological exploration of “(dis)orientation.” Although Vagle (2015) uses the Deleuzean concepts of multiplicity and line of flight to explore the phenomenological notion of intentionality, we suggest that engaging other, somewhat lesser used, Deleuzean concepts might better pair with J. Russell's (2013) use of the phenomenological ideas of orientation and embodied experiences. Thus, we draw on the Deleuzean creative conceptions of the molar/molecular, body without organs, and assemblages to queer(y) phenomenological notions of subjects, objects, lived bodies, and (dis)orientations. Through our inquiry, we found that dancing around the edges of phenomenology requires a redrawing of the boundaries of subjectivity and objectivity that moves from the individual to the collective, from static objects to material-semiotic generative nodes. Our provocation is that such a queer dance—one that prods and probes the geometries and optics of relationality (Barad, 2003)—can not only reinvigorate environmental education scholarship but also help to reimagine curriculum as a collective inquiry into the practices of enacting and policing boundaries.

KEYWORDS:

• body without organs
• environmental education
• phenomenology
• queer
• tango

Notes

1. http://edcp.educ.ubc.ca/7th-biennial-provoking-curriculum-studies-conference-at-ubc/

2. Trueit (2012, p. 13) notes that Doll's “abundant use of alliteration, [is] both heuristic and playful and very memorable. In China his name is synonymous with 4 R's.”

3. Braidotti (2000, p. 170) argues that “the notion of ‘figurations—in contrast to the representational function of metaphors’—emerges as crucial to Deleuze's notion of a conceptually charged use of the imagination.” Similarly, Haraway (1997, p. 11) asserts that “figurations are performative images that can be inhabited . . . condensed maps of contestable worlds… [and] bumps that make us swerve from literal-mindedness.”

4. “Inter-” (prefix) meaning between, among, in the midst of, within, mutually, and/or reciprocally; in combination with verbs to “intercēdĕre to go between; intercipĕre to seize on the way, intercept; interdīcĕre to interpose in speech, interdict; interjacĕre to throw between, interject; interpōnĕre to put between, interpose; intervenīre to come between, intervene; interdigitālis lying between the fingers; interfluus flowing between; intermūrālis between walls; interamnium a place between rivers” (OED, 2015, para. 1).

5. In the production of this essay we also performed a version of queer tango by exemplifying shifting and exchanging leader/follower roles. As co-authors located in different hemispheres with a 17-hour time difference, we collaborated asynchronously by exchanging, via email, successive/suggestive drafts.

6. See http://www.palgrave.com/br/book/9781137374844

7. Butler (2015, p. 15) warns against the process of “precaritization”—the favoring of individual entrepreneurial modalities rather than collective response-ability—a process that draws on “a heightened sense of expendability or disposability that is differentially distributed throughout society.” She continues by explaining that: “The more one complies with the demand of ‘responsibility’ to become self-reliant, the more socially isolated one becomes and the more precarious one feels; and the supporting social structures fall away for ‘economic’ reasons . . . it redefines responsibility as the demand to become an entrepreneur of oneself under conditions that make that dubious vocation impossible” (Butler, 2015, p. 15). Instead we strive to create relations of, what Haraway (2010, para. 7) describes as, “response-ablility,” by embracing the “ontological choreography” of life. (Also see Schrader, 2010).

8. Fawcett (2009) draws on two phenomenologists who attempt to shift, disrupt, and/or challenge normative conceptions of bodily boundaries, namely Evernden (1992) and Csordas (1999), to argue for a shift to what Evernden (1988) calls a “field of care”—an acknowledgment that, as Fawcett (1989, p. 16) writes: “We are not merely unique individuals all bundled up in our own needs and feelings. Our very selves extend beyond our bodies, to the beings, human and non-human, to whom we are connected.”

9. As Haraway (2011, p. 12) writes, “SF is that potent material-semiotic sign for the riches of speculative fabulation, speculative feminism, science fiction, speculative fiction, science fact, science fantasy—and, I suggest, string figures.” Haraway (2011, p. 15) playfully uses multiple meanings of SF games to dismantle the fact/fiction binary, drawing connections through the various practices of creating and imagining reality/stories/worlds, “practices of scholarship, relaying, thinking with, [and] becoming with.” Haraway (2011, p. 12) adds: “In looping threads and relays of patterning, this SF practice is a model for worlding. Therefore, SF must also mean ‘so far,’ opening up what is yet-to-come in protean entangled times’ pasts, presents, and futures.”

10. In retrospect, we can interpret the production of “Tales from Camp Wilde” in terms of queer tango. N. Gough and A. Gough (2003) devised an imaginary space in which they began to improvise their textual performance of queer(y)ing environmental education research. They then invited four other “partners” (the only criterion for inviting them was that they were known to be antithetical to diverse heteronormative positions) to join in the performance, to which assemblage one partner, Peter Appelbaum, added his daughter, Sophia.