Picturing Queer at School

This article is concerned with interrogating what has evolved as “normal” representations of the schooling experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students in literature concerned with social/sexual justice. It argues that these representations necessitate understanding LGBT within a binary of either “victims” or “heroes,” and this constitution obscures these young peoples’ lived schooling realities. In queer style, the article endeavors to expose the “normal” in these representations and consider their conditions of possibility for understanding LGBT students’ schooling experience within this dyad. It is proposed that this portrayal limits how we might understand LGBT students’ schooling experiences beyond this dualistic binary. To refuse this flat portrayal and lend complexity to it, the article draws on findings from a project around the sexual cultures of schooling that employed photo methods. Identifying inconsistencies between a participant's photo and her narrative explanation of it as an entry point for thought, Barad's concept of intra-activity is drawn upon to think through this binary problem. In this way, the article gestures toward an understanding of LGBT that is neither victim nor hero, nor some combination of both.