Posthuman performativity, gender and “school bullying”

Abstract

n 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 insights drawing 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 of discursive-material intra-action to consider the more-thanhuman relationalities of bullying. Throughout the article, we demonstrate the approach using examples from qualitative research with teens in the UK and Australia, exploring non-I Posthuman performativity, gender and 'school bullying' 81 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 intraactions of skirts and hair through which 'girl' and 'boy' and 'slut' and 'gay' materialise in school spacetimematterings. In our conclusion we briefly suggest how the new materialism helps to shift the frame of attention and responses informing gendered intra-actions in schools.

Unpacking the bullying doll

“…2 Horton and Forsberg, 2015. 3 Ringrose and Rawlings, 2015;Søndergaard, 2015;Yoneyama, 2015. I O of the bullying elephant at a place the author called "the socialecological square". 4 Seeing this as a chance to engage in a cross-paradigmatic discussion of school bullying, I packed my field notebook into my bag and headed out of the department's main door, off in search of the aforementioned square.…”

Cellphilm production as posthuman research method to explore injustice with queer youth in New Brunswick, Canada

“…highlights a number of material agents that queer youth engage within their in-school and out-of-school lives. Hallways and lockers were connected to participants' experiences of isolation and gender-based violence-the spaces must be viewed in relation to the phenomena of queer exclusion and erasure in schools (see also Ringrose & Rawlings, 2015). We highlight how Nackawic Needs a GSA Now!!…”

‘It's not bullying’, ‘It's just a joke’: Teacher and student discursive manoeuvres around gendered violence

“…Perceived or actual 'promiscuity' is an equally vitriolic force that insidiously and relentlessly pursues girls (Chambers et al, 2004), with a whole host of associated pejoratives (see e.g. Payne, 2010) applied for the most innocuous of practices, for example having the wrong hair style, or wearing the wrong bag (Ringrose & Rawlings, 2015). Again, however, schooling systems can limit potential teacher interventions in this situation.…”