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Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Posthuman performativity, gender and ‘school bullying’
T2 - exploring the material-discursive intra-actions of skirts, hair, sluts, and poofs
AU - Ringrose, Jessica
AU - Rawlings, Victoria
PY - 2015/8/20
Y1 - 2015/8/20
N2 - In this article we take off from critiques of psychological and school bullying typologies as creating problematic binary categories of bully and victim and neglecting socio-cultural aspects of gender and sexuality. We review bullying research informed by Judith Butler’s theories of discursive performativity, which help us to understand how subjectification works through performative repetitions of heterosexual gender norms. We then build on these insightsdrawing on the feminist new materialist approach of Karen Barad’s posthuman performativity, which we argue enlarges our scope of inquiry in profound ways. Barad’s theories suggest we move from psychological models of the inter-personal, and from Butlerian notions of discursive subjectification, to ideas ofdiscursive-material intra-action to consider the more-than-human relationalities of bullying. Throughout the article, we demonstrate the approach using examples from qualitative research with teens in the UK and Australia, exploring non-human agentic matter such as space, objects and time as shaping the constitution of gender and sexual bullying events. Specifically we examine the discursive-material agential intra-actions of skirts and hair through which ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ and ‘slut’ and ‘gay’ materialise in school spacetimematterings. In ourconclusion we briefly suggest how the new materialism helps to shift the frame of attention and responses informing gendered intra-actions in schools.
AB - In this article we take off from critiques of psychological and school bullying typologies as creating problematic binary categories of bully and victim and neglecting socio-cultural aspects of gender and sexuality. We review bullying research informed by Judith Butler’s theories of discursive performativity, which help us to understand how subjectification works through performative repetitions of heterosexual gender norms. We then build on these insightsdrawing on the feminist new materialist approach of Karen Barad’s posthuman performativity, which we argue enlarges our scope of inquiry in profound ways. Barad’s theories suggest we move from psychological models of the inter-personal, and from Butlerian notions of discursive subjectification, to ideas ofdiscursive-material intra-action to consider the more-than-human relationalities of bullying. Throughout the article, we demonstrate the approach using examples from qualitative research with teens in the UK and Australia, exploring non-human agentic matter such as space, objects and time as shaping the constitution of gender and sexual bullying events. Specifically we examine the discursive-material agential intra-actions of skirts and hair through which ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ and ‘slut’ and ‘gay’ materialise in school spacetimematterings. In ourconclusion we briefly suggest how the new materialism helps to shift the frame of attention and responses informing gendered intra-actions in schools.
KW - Butler
KW - Barad
KW - New materialism
KW - Bullying
KW - Gender
KW - Heterosexuality
KW - intra-action
KW - spacetimematterings
KW - agential realism
U2 - 10.3384/confero.2001-4562.150626
DO - 10.3384/confero.2001-4562.150626
M3 - Journal article
VL - 3
SP - 1
EP - 37
JO - Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics
JF - Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics
SN - 2001-4562
IS - 2
ER -