Abstract
This chapter contributes to the mapping of a ‘new’ ontology of sexuality at school. Drawing on new feminist materialist thinking from Barad (Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press, Durhman, 2007), Bennett (The force of things: steps toward an ecology of matter. Polit Theo 32(3):347–372, 2004) and Lenz Taguchi (2013), it analyses photographs from a project on the sexual cultures of schooling in a way that takes ‘things’ or ‘matter’ seriously. Seeking to disrupt the idea that humans represent the only site for, and expression of sexuality, it explores how matter and meaning are co-constitutive in sexuality’s becoming at school. Instead of seeing sexuality as discursively constituted through a plethora of schooling processes and practices, another proposition is offered. Sexuality does not pre-exist matter/meaning but comes into being via their relation.
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Notes
- 1.
Here I draw on the term materialdiscursive from the work of Lenz Taguchi (2013).
- 2.
That these ideas are ‘new’ is contested. As Jones and Hoskins (2013) argue, viewing the world as an entanglement of the human and natural, forms part of traditional Maori thought in Aotearoa-New Zealand where objects are perceived as alive and to be respected. As Taylor and Ivinson (2013) note, ‘Jones and Hoskins remind us, that a nature/human split has been inflicted by western thinking (as per Descartes) and exported via colonialism’ (p. 666).
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Allen, L. (2017). The Power of Things! A ‘New’ Ontology of Sexuality at School. In: Allen, L., Rasmussen, M.L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Sexuality Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40033-8_30
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