21
`Queer
Goings-on': An Autoethnographic Account of the Experiences and Practice
of Performing a Queer Pedagogy
SAGE Publications, Inc.200610.1191/0967550706ab027oa
MarkVicars
University of Sheffield, UK, aldous38@btinternet.com
Address
for correspondence: Mark Vicars, Department of Educational Studies, University
of Sheffield, 388 Glossop Road, Sheffield, South Yorkshire S10 2JA, UK; Email:
aldous38@btinternet.com
In this paper, I use autoethnography
to reconstruct scenes from my experiences of working as a teacher of English
and Drama in an international British Curriculum Secondary school. I employ
literary and poetic devices to create an impression of the experiences of
performing a Queer pedagogy and focus on a series of incidents to tell of
the ways in which the rigid dichotomies of identity are policed within educational
settings. In this paper, I question one key incident in an attempt to illustrate
the ethical and moral dilemma faced when the division between sexuality and
pedagogy, teacher and student is breached. I attempt to tell of the relationship
of the periphery to the centre and of the tensions that emerge when a heteronormative
regime is resisted.
If
you want to know me, then you must know my story, for my story defines who
I am. And if I want know myself, to gain insight into the meaning of my own
life, then I, too, must come to know my own story. I must come to see in all
its particulars the narrative of the self and the personal myth that I have
tacitly, even unconsciously composed over the course of my years. It is a
story I continue to revise, and to tell myself (and sometimes to others) as
I go on living. (McAdams, 1993: 11) A text can only come to life when it is
read, and if it is to be examined, it must therefore be studied through the
eyes of the reader. (Iser, 1971: 2–3)
22
IS IT
ALL ABOUT ME? HOW QUEER! What am I trying to do with this writing? I have
never found writing easy, never quite sure out of which voice I should speak,
Hallet (1999). I feel nervous in experimenting with a methodological approach
that `denatu- ralises conceptions of “appropriate” forms of educational
theorizing, prac- tice and research', Miller (1998: 371) to tell of my experience
as a `queer' teacher. Brandt et al. (2001) thinks that my feeling is a predictable
state but suggests that it is useful in that `such states give us direct access
to the ways in which what is felt internally as `“personal experience” is intimately connected to the institutions outside the self that foster and
promote such feelings', Brandt et al. (2001: 21). I would like to engage the
active reader, for them to produce their own pleasures of this text, Barthes
(1976). However, I am mindful of the personal and professional risks involved
in such an endeavour, of laying myself open to `the trivializing charge of
self-indulgence that is so readily levelled by mainstream academics', Sparkes
(2003: 73). I am attempting to create impressions of places and people that
led me to question the ways that I belong, act, speak and represent myself
as a Gay/Queer man and as a teacher. I am finding it impossible to reproduce
a neutral account veiled in an objective representation. An attempt to do
so would be mechanistic, technical and methodologically invalidate a critical
reflexivity weaved within the process of identifying and recon- structing
the contexts which formed my reality of the events, McNamee (1993: 5). The
claim has been made that reflexive authors are paradigmatically circumscribed,
Pollner (1991). In gazing once again at past events, I find myself doing this
autoethnography from a Queer perspective that uses what Hill (1996) has called
`fugitive knowledge'. Fugitive knowledges are forms of knowing that are used
to disrupt heterosexualizing pedagogies. Queer, as a term, a theory and a
way of being, is increasingly being con- tested and usefully problematized.
The potential of Queer as a conceptual tool is that it can productively fuse
the divisions between practice, politics and theory. Within the academy, it
has shot out disruptive rhizomes that have challenged orthodoxies of knowing
and generated discursive activity that has focused critical attention on the
ways in which the regime of the normative habitually constructs and naturalizes
within everyday practices of life. To adopt a Queer stance is to resist essentialist
notions of sexual identity. It is a position that abruptly reconsiders the
politics of identity by reconstructing allegiances across disparate communities
that are framed, found out and made visible by their differences. Queer embraces
the provisional in its refusal to be pinioned by any one single definition.
It can be rooted in embodied experiences that inform, propel
23
and fashion
meaning around its use. In this context, it has been employed politically
to agitate, the most notable illustrations being the direct action taken
by the protest groups Queer Nation, and Act-Up. Theoretically, it has been
utilized to analyse the effects of communities of practice (Lave and Wenger,
1991), on dissident subjectivities and as the anonymous author of Queers
read this, a leaflet distributed at a New York Pride march in June 1990,
states: `Being Queer means leading a different sort of life. It's about defining
ourselves. Using “queer” is a way of reminding how we are perceived.
Queer can be a rough word but it is also a sly and ironic weapon' (Anon,
1990: 1). I offer my under- standing of it as positionality that focuses on
actions not actors (Britzman, 1995) and epistemologically as a way of knowing,
rather than something to be known (Kopelson, 2002). A Queer reflexivity raises
the significance of employing ontology for unsettling thinking about reality,
agency and ways of being and relating. Leonard (1997) has pointed out that
a `Queer theory urges the discovery of subjugated knowledge, and the positing
and exploration of sites of resistance within the pressured “subject” who knows' (1997: 4). Ways of being, traditionally categorized as perverse,
are able to be explored with- out pathology. Queer is a process of constant
becoming and movement and Morris (1998) suggests that `A queer identity is
a chameleon-like refusal to be caged into any prescribed category or role'
(1998: 279). Honeychurch (1996) has commented that: A queering standpoint
in social science research is a vigorous challenge to that which has constrained
what may be known, who may be the knower, and how knowledge has come to be
generated and circulated ... [and] queers participate in positioning themselves
through both authoring and authorising experience. (Honeychurch, 1996: 342)
If, as Chia (1996) suggests, reflexivity can assist in understanding the process
of becoming, the recovering of emerging experiences, and the making strange
of what is familiar, then it finds a home within this text that attempts
to complexify as opposed to simplify and question instead of answer the contradictions
and dissonances between the social roles I have come to inhabit. A Queer reflexivity
would resist the appeal of constructing an authorial identity to unify narratives
told of a sovereign self, Crawley (2002). I am conscious that in placing myself
within this text as a speaking subject I have been constituted and reconstituted
by discourse, embedded in a intricate network of social relations (Foucault,
1972) and am spoken by language (Lacan, 1977). My voice has become a necessary
fiction from which I am able to speak back and about the
24
multiple
subjectivities of self that have been discursively constituted and reiteratively
performed. Talburt (1999) has commented that: For ethnography to engage queer
theories can be a difficult task, particularly when voice, visibility, the
self and experience have inherently mediated forms and when knowledge and
ignorance do not readily offer evidence of their workings. A difficulty is
to discover how epistemologies that rely on seeing and hearing can be brought
into dialogue with epistemologies that question what is seen and heard. (Talburt,
1999: 529) In trying to overcome the difficulties, I am attracted by Heidegger's
(1966) appeal to employ `meditative thinking' as a way of opening up pos-
sibilities and to query the orthodox rules that discipline what questions
are asked and how we seek the answers. Meditative thinking offers a space
in which truth and knowledge are constructed as a dialectical social practice
(Cunliffe, 2001). It requires me to think about my own practices of self as
a process of continual negotiations (Butler, 1997; Probyn, 1996) in rela-
tion to the knowledge derived from performing rigid, dichotomous identi- ties'
produced out of social categories (Evans, 2002). Talburt (1999) suggests,
Queer theory pushes the limits of ethnography ... that seeks to understand
the formation of subjectivities and practices in relations of power, in that
it explicitly draws presences from discursive silences as it questions the
constitution and effects of social and institutional norms. (Talburt, 1999:
537) What, then, are the potential sites in which a Queer identity can find
expression within everyday experiences of teaching and learning and within
schools? It is perhaps in the refusal to be pinioned by the weight of professional
role, one that rigidly delineates student from teacher, private from public,
that I can come to articulate what I mean by a Queer peda- gogy. Thomas (1993)
has commented that: `It is difficult to separate con- vincingly and reliably,
self from professional persona. It seems ... to be in the nature of teaching,
that the mask of the role player is likely to slip' (Thomas, 1993: 239). It
would seem to me that a Queer presence in pedagogy would trouble `the very
relationships of the day to day lived experience of school life' (Morris,
1998: 285) and `offer an alternative to move beyond the limiting homo/hetero
binary' (Quinlivan and Town, 1999: 253). In doing so, making possible a critique
of what is constituted as normal behaviours, roles and expectations. In critiquing
my professional practice as a teacher and of the social and cultural contexts
in which my sexual identity had been constituted, I have
25
come
to realize that schools and classrooms are places where I become invisible
or am made to become invisible. It seems to me that I have always felt pressured
to legitimize and explain what it is that I am and what I do, especially to
myself. Tierney (1997) suggests this feeling could be a product of a heterosexualizing
culture and discourse, one in which: `The widespread notion that heterosexuality
is normal and that everything that is not heterosexual is somehow aberrant
and has placed queers in a constant existential state of questioning ourselves,
our identity, and how we should act' (Tierney, 1997: 39). My unaccomplished
performances of normative gender and sexuality in educational settings have
subsequently continued to shape and provide a pattern to how I have come to
have an experience of what it means to be a teacher who is gay. My feelings
of being an outlaw in the educational process have a genealogy. Constantly
being positioned in relation to the force of dominant institutional discourses
and agendas is how I have come to understand and interpret the intersections
of the personal on professional practices (Vicars, 2003; 2005). In this text
I have chosen to reconstruct and critically reflect on a key moment from
my past. The slippage of the private into the public disrupted the social
and cultural roles I was expected to perform and prob- lematised my cultural
identities as teacher and Gay/Queer man. Said (1989: 225) suggests that `...
the crossing of boundaries are experiences that can therefore provide us with
new narrative forms'. By experiment- ing with writing, with ways of representing
lived experience, I hope to be able to assimilate the cognitive and emotional
sources of my knowledge to tell of the dilemma I found myself in when binaries
of personal/ professional were breached. TELLING TALES: REVISITING THE PAST
IN THE PRESENT AND TOWARDS THE FUTURE Conscious and unconscious are asymmetrically
co-present: the inner structure maps the outer conceptualisings. This mapping
is above all governed by linguistic experience. (Wright, 1984: 107) I reorganize
the space at my desk in order to begin writing. Does the coffee pot need refilling?
Do I have another packet of cigarettes? Have I remembered to switch on the
answer phone? I start to tap away at my key- board scouring experience, aware
that it already exists as an `interpreta- tion and is in need of interpretation'
(Scott, 1992). As I settle down in front of the computer screen, the taste
of bitter coffee is blended with cigarette
26
smoke
and I reach for the mediating forces of memory and language and wait for them
to assert authority on my unconscious. I am getting lost in past imaginings
and struggle to find the language to share and interpret my world. How do
I start to give a form to a narrative that will hopefully reveal how my identity
as a teacher and my educational practice has been constituted through `material,
cultural and interpsychic relations' Smith and Watson (2001: 25). Grasping
at images from the past, I selectively revise scenes and reorder fragments
in an attempt to make sense of those critical, defining transitional moments
located in a multiple embodied life. What order can I impose on the illusions
of myself and of others that claim to be truthful expressions? I am becoming
aware how the events I select are constantly up for negotiation. With each
churned and filtered motion, they recoil from immediate analysis. Hesitantly,
they emerge into words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs that require struc-
ture and `emplotment' (Bruner, 1990; Polkinghorne, 1988; Ricoeur, 1984). It
is in the writing that I find the interpretation is being formed. It is through
this developing narrative that I hope to be able to find the threads of my
story. I light another cigarette and draw deeply, pulling the nicotine-laced
smoke deep into kippered lungs. I observe the yellowed surface of the monitor
tarnished by numerous nocturnal sessions spent reading and thinking in this
room that I converted to a study on my return to England. I recall the comments
of a friend, an ex-smoker, who on quit- ting claimed that smokers are people
who suppress unresolved emotional conflicts. I light another cigarette and
think about my father who lay dying from emphysema in a flock-wallpapered
room for 13 months. I returned to his house having spent 10 years overseas
teaching. On my return, I obstinately clung to the remnants of a life I had
known, a life I had created. Artefacts from that life (hand-crafted Japanese
fans, earthenware sake sets and stone-carved Theravada Buddhas) clutter this
new space that I have consciously created in my father's house. Garishly
announcing their origins, they reside in stark contrast to my father's collections
of porcelain figurines and are a visual reminder of the distance and differences
that existed between us and that neither of us managed to breach. I never
wanted to be a teacher. I based my perceptions of the profession on the grey
suited, pallid-faced disciplinarians of my youth. They embod- ied the substance
of control that was my secondary educational experi- ence. Even today, the
dictums of the maths teacher, `silence is golden', and taunts of the PE teacher
ring in my ears and sound the death knell for any endeavour vaguely mathematical
or activity in which I have to compete physically. Five years ago I had arrived
at a strange airport with no job, nowhere to live and I created a life for
myself. I carved out a home amidst
27
the chaos
of that uncanny city. Beguiled by the charms and anarchy of the metropolis,
I quickly adapted to the myriad ways of knowing this exotic geography and
its difference imprinted indelible patterns on my psyche. The pungent aroma
of spices blended with eye-watering carbon monoxide fumes that infused skin,
bone and connective tissue, worming a way through my outer defences. I embraced
its toxicity. It was a place that I thought at the time I would never want
to leave. Three months after arriving, I had applied for a job teaching English
and drama at an international school and I could not believe my good fortune
when I got it. Welcome to the smokers balcony! Sue, a formidable Geordie who
taught special needs took me immediately under her wing. We're not really
allowed to smoke but the head turns a blind eye if we are discreet. Dipping
in and out of conversations, she maintained a constant dialogue and was the
lynch pin that kept everything and everyone together. You canne hav any secrets
on the balcony pet. I love it here, been here for three years now. The head
is a good un and we're like one big family. Great place to work, kids are
wonderful, staff is best I've ever worked with. Now tell me 'bout you. Four
years later and my leaving day approached. In the interim, there had been
a change of leadership and the incoming Head had established a regime that
reminded me of those tortuous times I had spent under the disciplining gaze
of former PE masters. Increasingly, I felt I had nowhere to turn and just
as I had aimlessly floundered on the football pitch I had for the past 12
months questioned whether I could sustain the humiliations that resulted from
not being one of the lads. There had been a plethora of new appoint- ments,
all men and the emphatic performances of masculinity that I had believed secured
them jobs in the first place had a dramatic impact across the school. Steve,
the newly appointed Head of English, in a department of two, had recently
allotted himself the role of captain for the newly formed staff football team
and set about establishing his order on and off the pitch. Now then tiger,
I've decided to start an English Speaking Club. The little bastards keep talking
their own language and I've got to do Something to stamp it out. Here is how
it works, every time one of the little fuckers uses ***** put their name on
the board. At the end of each week the names will be collected and if a name
appears more than once it will be published in the school magazine that is
sent home to the parents. Naming and shaming tiger, that is what it's all
about.
28
And
so it continued, aggression seemed to characterize his every act. I had grown
accustomed to his commentary on my sexuality in terms of `was I able to sit
down after the weekend' and `had I had it up the arse?' My resist- ance to
what Steve represented, personally and professionally, was making my position
within the school increasingly vulnerable. I worked hard to maintain my approach
to teaching in the classroom and a way of being with the students that encouraged
openness, challenged prejudices, and attempted to restore equity to the teaching/learning
interface. This stance had attracted attention from the senior management
team who had on more than one occasion commented that my pedagogic style would
be better suited to the `progressive' philosophy of education advocated by
Alexander Neill's Summerhill School. I knew that in their comparison of my
classroom, and by implication my practice that I was being told I did not
fit in with his concept of how a school should operate. I had a feeling that
my days were increas- ingly numbered because I persistently remained sceptical
of the changes that were being introduced. I disrupted the view held by senior
management and Steve that in the classroom an effective teacher should only:
`... deal with the part of the child that is above the neck; and ... the
emotional, vital part of the child is foreign territory' (Summerhill School).
The differences were to become more pronounced. That Steve tolerated me was
apparent. Using the status of Head of Department, he asserted authority and
I was informed of departmental decisions as opposed to being involved in creating
policy. He increasingly started to question my choice of texts from the IGCSE
(International General Certificate in Secondary Education) syllabus and began
to regulate how it should be taught. With each confrontation, it became clear
that his need to win was driving the encounter. Agreeing to disagree was not
an option. Metaphors of football, of playing on the same team, were drawn
upon and it was made abundantly clear to me that in `playing offside' I was
disrupting `his game'. The time of year approached when timetables are suspended
and there is a sense of the daily life of school shuddering to a stop. It
was exam time. It had been decided by the Headmaster that subject teachers
would invig- ilate their own exams. Steve and I were thrust together for a
week in the claustrophobic assembly hall. Look at em, a couple of shittas.
Eh? Returning from giving out extra sheets of paper, I did not have a clue
to what he was referring. Them, a couple of shittas! What are you on about
now? Them!
29
He gestured
to where two Year 11 lads were sitting industriously working through the question
paper. For crying out loud, stop it, they're kids. They're a couple of pussies.
You know what they said `bout me? I knew that he was `pissed off'. These students
had asked to be transferred to my class two terms previous. Having to produce
a valid reason for their wanting to move from what was the top set down to
the bottom set, the Headmaster had demanded to know the reason. A meeting
had been organized where their parents had explained that the two lads were
uncomfortable and fed up with being made fun of. Both had long hair and wore
hair bands to keep it out of their face. It was at the annual sports day that
the situation finally came to a head. You're on shot-putt with Steve. I inwardly
groaned and made my way over to where a bunch of the less able and less physically
streamlined kids were lining up. Duuur, are you stupid or what, I told you
to line up over there. I was not quite sure if he was talking to me or the
kids. I looked around to check and spied Pete, the music teacher, lurking
in the shade eating an ice cream and resplendent in a specially purchased,
and it has to be said, rather camp red ensemble. Pete was not in the least
sporty but felt that he should at least look the part. The lucky so-and-so
had been given crowd control and, as there was not that much of a crowd to
control, had found a quiet spot to observe the proceedings. That fat queer
cunt! Oh leave it out, what has he ever done to you? He makes me want to spew.
You know what I want to do? I wanna tie that fat queer fucker down to a chair
and stuff my fist down his throat till he gags. I want to ram it down so
hard that his teeth break and he starts to choke. How very sexual! What phallic
imagery! It sounds like you want to fuck him? Maybe that's it, you secretly
fancy a bit of cock? Fuck off, that's disgusting! Uurgh, is that all you think
about? I had had enough and walked away to join Pete and have a lick of his
ice cream. As it was the time of year when contracts were up for renewal,
I had decided enough was enough. My decision had just been made. In between
mouthfuls of vanilla whip, I told Pete. You're doing what? I'm leaving. Why?
30
Pete
could not understand. Look, I've had two years working with Steve and let's
face it this is not the place it used to be. It is virtually unrecognisable
from the school we started at four years ago. I don't look forward to coming
in any more, yeah the kids are still great but it's the rest of it that is
a nightmare. Steve has re-signed for another two years and I have had enough.
The last day of term arrived and I was running late for the ritual line up
for the school photograph. Making my along the bleachers, I shouted out my
apologies to the sweating bodies bunched together in a forced pose of institutional
togetherness. We were anything but one big happy family. Sorry I'm late, sooorrry.!
Watch yer back boys, Vicars is coming through! I had made the right decision.
I felt such a sense of relief knowing that I would no longer have to put
up with any more of it. I returned to my classroom to finish off packing up
my things. Dahhhhling! Karla the art teacher announced herself, bounded into
my room and gave me a hug. I was bustled out of my classroom to an awaiting
taxi. I demanded to know what was going on. I had come to hate surprises
considering the amount I had had to accommodate during the previous couple
of years. Now, close your eyes. Clutching onto Karla I made my way up the
narrow winding stairs. Surprise! Opening my eyes I found myself in a small
restaurant packed with year 10 and 11 students. A buffet was laid out and
ominously a karaoke machine was buzzing on a raised platform stage. Isn't
it fabulous! They organised it all. Happy leaving! The next couple of hours
were spent eating, drinking, saying goodbye and swapping email addresses.
I was surprised to see Bank there, for the last two years he had been visibly
reluctant to have anything at all to do with me. I had taught him at the beginning
of year 10, he was in my English IGCSE set and we had always got on well.
Steve had decided that those students who did not stand a chance of passing
the exam would not be entered as it would look bad on the department's pass
rate. They would be taken out of mainstream English classes and would have
to
31
do extra
EFL. I had argued against the decision but, as it was supported by the senior
management, I had to tell Bank that he would be leaving the class. But I
don't want to Mr. Vicars, I will try harder, I really will. I'm sorry, Bank,
it has already been decided. What if I got my parents to pay? I'm sorry, Bank,
there is nothing I can do. I knew as well as he did that his departure from
my class would be read by his peers that he was not that bright as only the
less able kids were being creamed off and separated into the sink category.
Hello Bank, how are you? I wasn't going to come. I hated you, you know! Why
did you throw me out of your class? I was trying hard. ... As I explained
to him what had happened and that it had not been my decision, he started
to cry. I'm sorry, Mr. Vicars, I didn't know ... How could I explain? Why
didn't you tell me at the time? Visibly upset and crying harder, he went to
put his arms around me. Mr. Vicars, Karaoke time. Saved by a song, I felt
uncomfortable about being physical with Bank. I knew it was not appropriate
behaviour for a teacher. I understood what he was trying to tell me and regretted
not being totally honest with him at the time. Amid cheers and shouts of
my name I was dragged to the microphone just in time to launch into Gloria
Gaynor's Gay disco anthem I will survive. The whole room erupted with the
refrain, Karla was being encouraged to join me on the stage and the amassed
throng were on their feet dancing and singing at the top of their voices.
Suddenly, Bank jumped on to the stage and started to take off his tie, then
his shirt. Dancing around me to the cheers of onlookers, he flung his arms
around my waist and planted a kiss on my cheek. What on earth was happening
now? What did he think he was doing? What did I think I was doing? Imagine
this scene: Dramatis personae: SEXUALITY, an unconscious force
32
PEDAGOGY,
a conscious force PROFESSIONAL ETHICS, a controlling force MINOR CHARACTER,
a 17-year-old boy A composite set represents the spaces of classroom and bar.
(Minor Character and Pedagogy are off stage. Professional Ethics is centre
stage keeping control of sexuality who is walking slowly up stage out of sight
of the audience. Suddenly music starts and sexuality moves down stage centre,
Professional Ethics is unsure what to do and stands watching, helpless to
intervene.) PROFESSIONAL ETHICS: Stop it now! SEXUALITY: (In a stage whisper)
Relax it will be fine. (Starts to sing to the stoic figure of Professional
Ethics) First I was afraid, I was petrified, kept thinking I could never live
without you by my side. PROFESSIONAL ETHICS (Glaring): This will end in tears,
I'm warning you, behave! SEXUALITY: But I spent all so many nights thinking
how you did me wrong and I grew strong, I knew that I would get along. PROFESSIONAL
ETHICS: You are making a spectacle! (Minor Character enters and walks over
to Sexuality; Professional Ethics becomes increasingly agitated and concerned.)
PROFESSIONAL ETHICS: (Direct address to Sexuality) Enough is enough, it's
time you made an exit. (Minor Character starts to undress; Sexuality watches
on bemused; Professional Ethics is furious.) PROFESSIONAL ETHICS: I'm warning
you. (Sexuality continues to move to the music. Sexuality stops dancing for
a moment, looks at Professional Ethics and turns to face the audience who
are on their feet cheering, clapping, shouting encouragement and singing.
Sexuality stands centre stage and is embraced by the Minor Character, the
audience erupts once again. Sexuality and Minor Character look at each other
and burst out laughing. They put their arms around each other and turning
to face the audience they both start to sing.) SEXUALITY/MINOR CHARACTER:
And now you're back from outer space I just walked in here to find you with
that look upon your face. PROFESSIONAL ETHICS: Look at yourself, think what
other people are going to say, think of your position. SEXUALITY: I should
have changed that stupid lock; I should have made you leave your key PROFESSIONAL
ETHICS: For Christ's sake! SEXUALITY: But I grew strong I learnt how to get
along. PROFESSIONAL ETHICS: You shouldn't be here doing this, I don't know
why you were invited?
33
(Minor
character moves towards Sexuality and starts to remove his school tie which
he swings around his head and flings into the audience. He then begins to
slowly unbutton his shirt whilst dancing. He then removes his shirt and throws
it over the head of Sexuality who all the time has been looking at Professional
Ethics. Sexuality, holds the shirt that had been draped over his face in his
left hand and tries to replace the microphone on its stand. He starts to exit
the stage only to be pulled back by the Minor Character who is now simulating
a striptease act much to the delight of the audience. Minor Character sidesteps
Professional Ethics who has run on to the stage and is attempting to stop
the performance. Sexuality is momentarily transfixed unsure whether to comply
with Professional Ethics attempt to restore order or to go to the rescue of
the Minor Character. He turns and walks towards the two characters who are
grappling centre stage and his presence arrests the struggle. Professional
Ethics glares at Sexuality who then turns to face Minor Character, they look
at each other, both start to laugh and dancing they turn to face the audience.)
PROFESSIONAL ETHICS: STOP!!!!!> (Sexuality, invites members of the audience
on-stage and as the music gets louder the stage begins to fill-up with an
assortment of figures who are swaying in time to the music, Professional Ethics
is hidden from view but is still audible. Sexuality, Minor Character and assembled
figures all start to sing) SEXUALITY: I will survive! MINOR CHARACTER: I will
survive! AUDIENCE ON STAGE: I will survive! (The song finishes, Sexuality
walks off stage followed by a defeated Professional Ethics. Pedagogy enters
dressed in a Police uniform and walks around the set inspecting it as if were
a crime scene. Note pad and pencil in hand, Pedagogy scribbles on the pad
and moves down stage right. There is a prolonged silence.) PEDAGOGY: (To the
audience who have returned to their seats) What did you witness? Come on who
will be the first to speak, I demand to know! What is your understanding?
Really, I am interested. What, you think I won't listen, that I have already
made up my mind. How hard can it be to tell me what has been going here? You
ask what I am going to do with the information. (To the audience) That sir/madam
is none of your business. (Pedagogy stands waiting as the house lights are
brought up and remains standing as the audience leave their seats and exit
the auditorium. As the last person exits through the doors, Pedagogy can be
heard beginning to talk.) PEDAGOGY: Well, I'm waiting! PICKING UP THE PIECES
Clough (2002) asks the question of function and purpose of stories in educational
research and proposes that narrative can disturb ways of
34
knowing,
it can be used to reframe the enquiring gaze. Contexts of the familiar are
rendered strange and the strange can become familiar. He comments: ... in
setting out to write a story, the primary work is in the interaction of ideas; in the act of thinking, tuning in, decision making and focusing on the primary
intent of the work ... writing a story ... is not carried out outside of a
need, a community, a context. (Clough, 2002: 8) By challenging conventional
assumptions of what constitutes legitimate pedagogical knowledge within educational
research (Bridges, 1998, 1999; Husu, 2002; Whitehead, 1997), I wanted to create
an authentic voice (Errante, 2000, 2001; MacDaniels, 2000) embedded in an
embodied form of knowing. I have wanted to create an accessible and `writerly'
text that is immediate and captures the attention and interest of whoever
is turning the page (Barthes, 1988). Sparkes (2003) has spoken of the effects
of using voice in this way to situate a specific response in the reader:
`I don't want readers to sit back as spectators. I want to engage them and
evoke a response. I want readers whatever their positioning in relation to
me, to feel care and desire when they read my stories' (Sparkes, 2003: 67).
In questioning the ethical and moral implications of performing pedagogy that
enunciates a `vulnerable self' (Ellis, 1999; Ellington, 1998), I have tried
to draw together the fragments of lived experience to construct a narrative
where lifeless data is transformed into a lived landscape (Oates, 1999). Smith
and Watson (2001) suggest that: Embodied subjects are located in their bodies
and through their bodies in culturally specific ways – that is, the
narrating body is situated at the nexus of language, gender, class sexuality
and other specificities, and autobiographical narratives mine this embodied
locatedness. (Smith and Watson, 2001: 38) I am aware that in using autobiographical
incidents the story I have written of myself will become a `story-telling
performance shot through with conflicting cultural meanings' Chapman, (1997:
7). Each memory that has been triggered, its interpretation and analysis is
already imbued with a situated morality and ethics. I have been careful to
obscure factual traces and have used fictitious names, other than my own,
to fashion what I hope could be considered as a substantial representation
of experience. In actively disrupting allegiances of belonging, in crossing
over and becoming part of the stories that are told, I am inhabiting the borderlands
that Rosaldo (1989: 207–08) considers as `sites of creative cultural
pro- duction' and I have been mindful of Laurel Richardson's (1990: 12)
35
remark
that: `No textual staging is ever innocent, we are always inscribing values
in our writing, it is unavoidable.' I have tried to be a good inform- ant
(Sikes, 2001) by creating scenes that draw on literary and poetic devices
to illuminate for the reader my perceptions and experience of the events (Ellis,
1995; Richardson, 1990). In using dialogue in different forms to show and
produce verisimilitude, I have hopefully extended an invitation to the reader
to engage with my reconstructed account of expe- rience, one in which language
ceases to be objective and the self becomes simultaneously object and subject.
I have tried to illustrate how a Queer reflexivity can be used to frame autobiographical
writing and I have chal- lenged the notion of a unified subject with agency,
in doing so problema- tizing lived experience as a site of self-hood and writing.
Denzin (1997: 140) has noted that `Stories are not waiting to be told; they
are constructed by the writer who attempts to impose order on perceived events'
and Winterson has commented that: Everyone, at sometime in their life, must
choose whether to stay with a ready-made world that may be safe but which
is also limiting, or to push forward, often past the frontiers of common-sense,
into a personal place, unknown and untried. (Winterson, 1991: xiv) Reconceptualizing
the act of writing as a performative act, I am attempt- ing to make available
representations of experience that are informed by and emerge out of an understanding
of how writing operates as an enactment of freedoms and a way of resisting
systems of domination. I have experimented with different modes of composition
to address the problem of trying to make queer voices visible within the
largely heteronormative framework of hegemonic educational discourse. Disrupting
the doxa (Bourdieu, 1984) of normative representational method has enabled
me to explore and represent aspects of pedagogy previously unthinkable. Challenging
the legitimacy of the symbolic capital of the academic field has meant thinking
about the ways texts position readers in relation to claims of truth and authority.
I have found that by utilizing creative and dramatic modes that is it possible
to attend to the social/cultural habits of being/doing that are performatively
constituted through language and that shape and influence the textual practice
of representing identities. The reality in the story is mine and is filtered
through my lexis and phrasings. That is not to say the representations are
inaccurate or untrue, they are a synthesis of the days, months and years spent
working alongside and with these people. They are my understandings of them
through time, they are how I have interpreted motives and actions and they
have been staged with the goal of recognition, communication and
36
hopefully
connection (Tierney, 1993). Experimentation in this way seems to fulfil my
readings and interpretations of events and travel in some way to realizing
Tierney's (1993) suggestion that there are occasions when there is a `need
to create texts that enable the reader to reflect on his or her own life and
see if the text resembles any sense of reality' (Tierney, 1993: 313). The
reconstruction of my journey in education resists teleological statements.
Miller (1998) has suggested that: ... addressing `self' as a site of permanent
openness and resignifiability opens up possibilities for queering autobiography,
for speaking and writing into existence denaturalised ways of being that are
obscured or simply unthinkable when one centred self-knowing story is substituted
for another. Miller (1998: 368) Bank's performance on that stage and our performance
together caused/causes me to reconsider what happened to my identification
as a teacher up to and on that day. I had never made a verbal declaration
of my sexuality and I had not really thought about whether the students I
taught knew if I was gay. I knew that they interacted with me differently
from the other teachers, but I had put that down to the fact that I had made
an effort to interact with them differently. After reeling from the initial
shock of what was unfolding my immediate (professional) thoughts were that
this should not be happening. I have come to realize this rupture of personal
and professional was a critical incident in my development as a teacher. The
rigid, dichotomous identities of teacher/student, gay/straight had been breached
and our performance on that day re-inscribed how we per- formed our given
identities of student and teacher. Transgressing what could be read as appropriate
or `normal' behaviour, a heteronormative reading might present Bank as being
`at risk'. As the teacher, should not I have been acting to determine closure
to the event? To what extent can I determine which of us unruly subjects
were in a position of power and therefore agency? To be quite honest, I am
still flummoxed by what hap- pened on that day and I do not think that I will
ever fully understand. It seems to me that we were both vulnerable. I had
much to lose and so did Bank. I could have stopped him; I could have walked
off the stage and reasserted my authority by stepping back in to the role
of teacher. Bank could, if he had wanted to, have got revenge, by placing
me in an awkward situation. It seems to me, with the advantage of hindsight,
that we were both inscribing ourselves against hegemonic social discourses.
Our per- formative refusal to be pinioned within and defined by a heteronormative
matrix made it possible for us to eschew a normative regime of identity and
identification by challenging personal and pedagogic boundaries.
37
However,
I am loathe to provide a definitive interpretation, to close off and shut
down the past. I leave it to live with me and maybe at some point in the
future I will come to an understanding that might make more sense. WHAT HAVE
I LEARNT? Apprehension.....fear ...pain.....doubt ....trust....friendship......fear
.....pain ...........courage .........hesitation .......dread...........relief
...........confusion .... acceptance..........doubt ...................anxiety.......relief.................pleasure
..................confusion.............desire .................excitement...........disbelief
..................anger ................sadness.............outrage................loss
............ ...............resistance ...............compassion............confusion.............love
... ...............grief .................companionship .........belonging........rejection
.... .....humour... WHAT AM I LEARNING? When we write vulnerably, we invite
others to respond vulnerably. Surely not every qualitative text that is written
needs to provoke a vulnerable response in the reader; just as surely, however,
some texts should. (Tierney, 2000: 549) I am 35 years old. I am male. I can
be camp. I can be butch. I live in a small northern town. I binge eat. I am
overweight. I smoke too much. I deny myself food. I can starve myself. I am
white. I am a rice queen. I am a dinge queen. I speak English. I speak other
languages not very well. I am 5 ft 6 in. tall. I am a student. I am a teacher.
I am single. I am a performer. I am British. I exist in cyberspace. I am a
gajin. I am a consumer. I watch musicals. I am a foreigner. I am an uncle.
I live alone. I sometimes have relationships. I have sex. I fall in love.
I fall out of love. I am consumed. I am a brother. I am a sister. I am doing
all these things all the time, over and over and over again. I repeat myself
constantly and it is the repetitions that I have come to inter- pret, reinterpret.
I have not yet come to understand. I am understanding. I am coming to ............................................................................................
.....................................................................................................................
...........Queer.
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NOTE
ON CONTRIBUTOR MARK VICARS is a recipient of an ESRC scholarship and is a
doctoral candidate in the Department of Educational Studies, University of
Sheffield. His PhD research is using a life history approach to investigate
the formative reading practices and literacy behaviour of gay men.