Governing Troubles: authority, sexuality and space

This paper analyses events at Kingsmead School, Hackney, in the aftermath of head teacher, Jane Brown's refusal to take children to a ballet of Romeo and Juliet. The paper explores the ensuing struggle over space, governance and gender within the context of LEA power after IMS. It analyses different levels of governance: direct, midway and at a distance, and explores the relationship between these levels and devolved legal powers. The paper links Hackney's techniques of governing, and school supporters’ acts of resistance, to their competing spatial representations of Kingsmead. Highlighted are discourses of ridicule, excessive sexuality, kinship, community and parents rights, as well as techniques of discipline, law, and fortification. Finally, the paper explores the conflict in terms of the production of lesbian feminist space, and considers the centrality of gender to the events that occurred.