Arguably, from the invention of adolescence at the beginning of the 20th century, developmental theory has served as the foundation of disciplinary study and professional practice with children and youth across the global West. Despite their founders’ assertions that development is culturally constructed, in educational and youth work practice contexts stage-based trajectories of normative human growth are largely erroneously accepted as ahistorical, apolitical, naturally occurring, and universally applicable. This paper presents critiques of developmentalism from historical, reconceptualist, and queer perspectives, calling into question the underlying principles of normalcy and abnormality that run through the developmental project. We pay particular attention to the potential of queer theory as an analytic to deconstruct developmentalism in the context of child and youth care, opening new possibilities for critical engagement with children and youth outside the context of development.
This article seeks to explore how non/human drag has been utilized to perform queer of colour feelings, which result in a mess-making of identity-based relationalities. Rooted in a phenomenological exploration of the fursona, this queer narrative case study focuses on furry acts, or the act of creating and embodying a personalized fursona, as non/human drag that becomes a site for self-exploration and queer of colour becoming. In exploring furry acts, this study centres its focus on the material impacts of non/human drag performances and suggests that furry acts are improvised responses to queer of colour domestication. The non/human drag performances, as explored through furry Poppy’s narratives, are also considered feral practices that intentionally bewilder and disorder subject identification. With a focus on furry acts as messy, this study proposes that non/human drag performances are essential for Poppy in accessing queer of colour joy, pleasure and liveability.
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