Wanting More: Queer Theory and Education

Abstract

Nearly at its 30th year, the critical disruptions occasioned by queer theory (and queer activism) have been useful to many of us in education; yet, after all these years, we still want (and need) more. Indeed, when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues within contexts of schooling and education, things are far from settled. Queer theory, however, has provided conceptual tools that push us to see, as well as to grapple with, the unfinished challenges of desire bound up with forms of teaching and learning. 1 The contingencies of pedagogies embedded in institutions and practices have always been queer things, structuring what we try to do in classrooms but exceeding those limits as well. Because queer theory traces the persistent breaks in and recuperations of normative power, it gives us strategies for trying to think about our ongoing efforts to intentionally queer processes that will both revert to normalcy and queer all on their own. Queer theories have helped to think more about abstractions but also cemented the sense of quotidian rupture. Since its inception, too, what queer theory can do for education, or anything else, has been subject to debate. On the one hand, queer theory has provided strategies for interrupting problematic educational practices (Britzman 1995). On the other hand, maybe queer theory is best thought of as not being especially performative (Berlant and Warner 1995). Furthermore, queer theory can also fail to account for forms of racialized queerness (Brockenbrough 2015) or "quare" experience (Johnson 2001).