Bodies, affect and schooling

Francis, D. A. (2022) Bodies, affect and schooling. In: Francis, D.A. (ed.) Queer Activism in South African Education. Taylor & Francis, pp. 39-59. ISBN 9781003187295 (doi: 10.4324/9781003187295-3)

Abstract

This chapter draws on affect theories to understand how cisheteronormativity works in and across bodies, discourses and practices to maintain social hierarchies. Specifically, it draws on ethnographic interviews with educational staff, queer and trans school attending youth to examine how homophobia and transphobia are responded to in South African schools. The conclusions reached are not encouraging. Despite consensus amongst school managers and teachers that homophobia and transphobia need to be addressed, they highlight numerous barriers that hold them back from doing so. In instances where there are interventions, school managers and teachers vilify queer and trans youth as deserving blame, highlighting how affect circulates in social relations of difference. Moreover, in more favorable interventions, there is a disregard for the social and institutional conditions that endorse and maintain cisheteronormativity in schools. I conclude by asking what if teachers and school managers turned homophobia and transphobia “inside out” to consider the practice of cisheteronormativity and how it might be subject to particular “sticking points” or sites of tension and why.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Francis, Professor Dennis
• Authors: Francis, D. A.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Education
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISBN: 9781003187295

Related URLs

• University of Glasgow Library Catalogue