Embodiment and becoming in secondary drama classrooms: the effects of neoliberal education cultures on performances of self and of drama texts

ABSTRACT

This article explores the effects of neoliberalism and performative educational cultures on secondary school drama classrooms. We consider the ways Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalysis and Butler’s concept of gender performance enable us to chart the embodied, relational, spatial and affective energies that inhabit the often neoliberal and heterosexually striated space of the drama classroom. These post-humanist analyses are useful methodological tools for mapping the complexities of student becomings in the space context of the secondary school. We also show how Foucault’s governmentality and Ball’s theory of competitive performativity are particularly salient in the context of immanent capitalism that shapes the desires of its subjects. These frameworks, when combined, can be useful in critiquing neoliberal educational assemblages and in indicating emerging deterritorializations and lines of flight in teachers and students.

KEYWORDS:

• Becoming
• Butler
• Deleuze and Guattari
• embodiment
• Foucault
• neoliberalism
• performativity
• secondary drama

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Pseudonyms are used throughout for names of participants and schools.

2. Deleuze and Guattari (1987 [2012]) rhizomatic ‘schizoanalysis’ is a concept created as an alternative to reductionist psychoanalysis, particularly Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex.

3. The Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) is a scale of socio-educational advantage for each Australian school. Each school’s ICSEA value appears on the School profile page on the My School website. A table presents the distribution of students across four socio-educational advantage quarters representing a scale of relative disadvantage (‘bottom quarter’) through to relative advantage (‘top quarter’) (ACARA, 2013, pp. 1–2).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kirsten Lambert

Kirsten Lambert is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Education, Murdoch University, focusing on gender and neoliberalism in arts education. She currently works as a drama and dance teacher in a large senior secondary college in Western Australia. Her research interests include teaching, drama, creativity, gender, neoliberalism and arts education.

Peter Wright

Peter Wright is an associate dean (research) and associate professor of arts education and research methods at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. He works across the arts with a commitment to personal, social and cultural inquiry, agency, education and expression, health and wellbeing. His research interests include teaching, learning and healing in, through, and with the arts; artistically-based approaches to research; creativity and socially engaged arts; applied theatre; transformational learning; teacher development in the arts; and participatory arts. Central to this work is an interest in social justice, social pedagogy, and social inclusion, and the way they are mediated in and through the arts.

Jan Currie

Jan Currie is an emeritus professor in the School of Education, Murdoch University. Her research interests are globalization and its impact on universities, gendered universities, pay equity and social justice issues in higher education. She is a co-author of Academic Freedom in Hong Kong; Global Practices and University Responses; and Gendered Universities in Globalized Economies: Power, Careers and Sacrifices.

Robin Pascoe

Robin Pascoe is a senior lecturer in the School of Education, Murdoch University, focusing on arts and drama education. He coordinates the arts education units in the B.Ed. primary and Grad.Dip.Ed. courses and is also the Academic Chair for secondary education in the School of Education. His research interests focus on arts education; applied aesthetic understanding, creativity, imagination, story and play. He is currently involved in research on making judgments about the effectiveness of arts education in schools as well the education of students with identified gifts and talents in the arts.