Curriculum, normativity and policies of recognition from school trajectories of “gay boys”

Abstract

This article explores the overlapping relations between normativity and policies of recognition in curricular discourses from the school experiences of three “gay boys”, named, in this text, as Mitchel, Jonas and Álvaro. Inspired by Judith Butler's work, the argument developed here attempts to displace the critique that describes curriculums as homogenous horizons of normativity and points that schools can contribute to a livable life. On the one hand, the struggle for intelligibility for what counts as a “gay boy” occurs within heterogeneous gender norms, which allow the boys to avoid abjection. As a corollary, these norms displace definitions of homosexuality centered on desire and create new definitions centered on a gender corporality called “gay”. On the other hand, these same corporal forms of circulation of recognition in the curriculum inscribe, through the ambivalence and heterogeneity of normativity, the viability of these school experiences. Therefore, if curriculums are instruments of subjection, they can also function as networks of forces in which intelligibility takes place, contributing to “gay boys” interacting with the historical conditions of the present.