Mary Bryson

Queer Pedagogy: Praxis Makes Im/Perfect

This article examines tensions between post-structuralist theories of subjectivity and essentialist constructions of identity in the context of a lesbian studies course co-taught by the authors. We describe the goals, organizing principles, content, and outcomes of this engagement in the production of “queer pedagogy” — a radical form of educative praxis implemented deliberately to interfere with, to intervene in, the production of “normalcy” in schooled subjects. We argue for an explicit “ethics of consumption” in relation to curricular inclusions of marginalized subjects and subjugated knowledges. We conclude with a critical analysis of the way that, despite our explicit interventions, all of our discourses, all of our actions in this course were permeated with the continuous and inescapable backdrop of white heterosexual dominance, such that: (a) any subordinated identity always remained marginal and (b) “lesbian identity” in this institutions context was always fixed and stable, even in a course that explicitly critiqued, challenged, and deconstructed a monolithic “lesbian identity.” Cet article porte sur la tension qui existe entre les theories de la subjectivite et les constructions essentialistes de l’identite dans le contexte d’un cours sur le lesbianisme donne par les auteures. Ces dernieres decrivent les buts, les principes organisateurs, le contenu et les resultats de leur demarche en vue de creer ce qu’elles designent sous le nom de “ queer pedagogy ”-une forme radicale de la praxis educative implantee delibere- ment pour contrecarrer le concept de “normalite” dans les matieres enseignees. Les auteu- res pronent une “ethique de la consommation” explicite pour ce qui a trait a l’inclusion des matieres marginalisees et des connaissances subordonnees. Elles concluent avec une analyse critique de la facon dont tous leurs discours et toutes leurs actions au sein du cours, en depit de leurs interventions explicites, avaient pour toile de fond inevitable la preeminence de l’heterosexualite des Blancs si bien que : a) toute identite subordonnee est toujours demeuree marginale, et b) l’“identite lesbienne” dans ce contexte etait tou- jours fixe et stable, et ce, meme dans un cours qui critiquait et mettait explicitement en question une “identite lesbienne” monolithique.

Telling Tales Out of School: Modernist, Critical, and Postmodern “True Stories” about Educational Computing

This article presents an analysis of the discourses of educational computing in terms of modernist, critical, and postmodernist narratives which attempt to tell “true stories” of how and why new technologies are to be harnessed in the service of educational ends, and about the prospects and pitfalls therein. The authors argue that it is principally the interpretive constraints imposed by these stories, and only secondarily the material capacities and constraints of the technology itself, which differently construct possibilities for pedagogic relations amongst students, teachers, and educational technologies. The authors conclude with an argument for (a) an “ethics of narration” in the weaving of tales with the focus squarely on the possibilities for agency and equity as these are enabled and constrained within particular emplotments and (b) seeking out typically untold and suppressed accounts in determining which tales told about educational computing are most likely to produce and to enable liberatory outcomes.

When Jill jacks in

The Internet represents both a meta-network of uniquely purposed spaces, and a set of linked technologies and practices; moreover, it is particularly significant as a contemporary site of cultural transformation, identification and community participation, as well as a means of access to and production of capital. Typically, research concerning women and the Internet has focused on “gender differences” in two ways: first, access to, perceptions of, competence in, and usage of, online tools (e.g., email lists, website authoring, etc.); and second, experiences in cyberspace locations, communities, and spaces (e.g., chat rooms, bulletin boards, etc.). The central tendency, methodologically and conceptually, has been to conflate sex with gender, and to compare research findings from samples of male and female subjects with the goal of discerning pertinent “gender differences” (see, for example, Lynn Cherny & Reba Weise 1996; Janet Morahan-Martin 2000; Sherry Turkle 1995). Differences between women, such as sexual orientation, race, age, and social class, are obscured by binary gender constructs (Teresa de Lauretis 1987). Queer, lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgendered (QLBT) women constitute a heterogeneous group that remains under-researched despite the fact that, as a stigmatized sexual subculture, its members embody unique characteristics, vulnerabilities, and concomitant requirements that need to be documented and taken into account (Mary Bryson 2002; Ann Cvetkovich 2003; Suzanne de Castell & Mary Bryson 1998a/b; Mary Gray 1999; Kath Weston 1998). Given the far-reaching significance of new media, there is a pressing need for comprehensive research and participatory community development efforts concerning complex issues of both access to and usage of the Internet among QLBT women. This research is an exploratory investigation into the significance of Internet technologies and communities for the production, mediatization, and narrativization of QLBT women’s relations, identificatory practices, desires, community participation, and opportunities for building a wide array of competencies and knowledges (e.g., technological, legal, medical, etc.). Cyberspace research has, on the whole, overlooked the unique insights that could be gained by a study of QLBT women’s uses and perceptions of, and experiences in, online tools and communities (significant exceptions are Shelley

Prospects for Identity Formation for Lesbian, Gay, or Bisexual Persons with Developmental Disabilities

The theoretical and practical constraints of identity formation for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) persons with developmental disabilities are explored. Firstly, disability and queer theory and conceptions of identification and community are presented. This is followed by a synopsis of some of the common societal myths about disability and about homosexuality. Thirdly, we trace how these myths affect and filter into caregiver attitudes, lesbian and gay communities and communities of persons with disabilities, including developmental disabilities. All these factors conspire to inhibit self-identification as LGB for persons with developmental disabilities. It is further argued that neither disability theorists nor queer theorists have adequately accounted for such complex identities, and that, perhaps, a fusion of disability theory and queer theory may provide a more comprehensive lens to capture these complexities. We conclude with tentative yet practical suggestions to begin to create community for LGB persons with a developmental disability.

Conditions for Success? Gender in Technology-Intensive Courses in British Columbia Secondary Schools

Gender inequities in technology are systemic in Canadian schools and workplaces (Status of Women Canada, 1997). Several recent analyses of British Columbia (BC) students’ participation in technology-intensive areas of the public school curriculum have documented a range of these inequities (Braundy, O’Riley, Petrina, Dalley, & Paxton, 2000; Bryson & de Castell, 1998; Schaefer, 2000). In the BC Ministry of Education’s (BC MOE) most recent technology policy report, Conditions for Success (1999), gender inequities are treated as symptoms of poor access, rather than as a systemic part of the school conditions themselves. Because the report’s authors misapprehended the extent of inequities, BC MOE’s Technology Advisory Committee recommended a distribution and integration of technologies to provide the new conditions for success in technology throughout BC’s public schools. We argue that the inequities in the BC schools are systemic and cannot be understood without an adequate assessment of participation and performance data. We analyze provincial trends in gender-differentiated participation and performance of students in the technology-intensive courses of BC public secondary education, at a time in Canadian history when competence and confidence with a range of technologies are essential for full cultural participation.More financial resources are being directed to technology than to any other area in public school budgets. For the period 1998 to 2004, the BC government committed

Can we play Fun Gay? Disjuncture and difference, and the precarious mobilities of millennial queer youth narratives

123 million to establish a Provincial Learning Network to network BC’s 1,700 public schools and improve access. Other provinces made similar commitments to information technology. Alberta, for example, invested

Youth, MySpace, and the Interstitial Spaces of Becoming and Belonging

85 million for the same time period. Inasmuch as girls continue to be under-represented in technology courses, they have not benefited from the comparatively large financial investments in technology. Policy makers in Canadian public education require access to sex-disaggregated data, in order to create and implement equity-oriented strategies in technology. The research described here represents a step towards the development of an information-rich database for monitoring technology course enrolments in Canadian schools and has both policy and scholarly implications.Sommaire exécutifLes inégalités sexuelles dans le domaine des technologies sont systémiques dans les écoles et les milieux de travail canadiens (Condition féminine Canada, 1997). En Colombie Britannique, plusieurs analyses récentes sur la participation des étudiants aux secteurs technologiques du curriculum des écoles publiques font état de nombreuses iniquités (Braundy, O’Riley, Petrina, Dalley et Paxton, 2000; Bryson et de Castell, 1998; Schaefer, 2000). Dans le plus récent rapport du ministère de l’Éducation de la Colombie Britannique, intitulé Conditions for Success (1999), les inégalités sexuelles sont traitées comme un symptôme plutôt que comme une composante systémique dés conditions qui caractérisent les milieux scolaires. Les auteurs du rapport se sont mépris sur l’étendue du phénomène, et le Technology Advisory Committee du ministère de l’Éducation a recommandé une distribution et une intégration des technologies dans toutes les écoles publiques de la Colombie Britannique, afin de créer de nouvelles conditions assurant le succès des élèves dans le domaine des technologies. À notre avis, les iniquités dans les écoles de la province sont systémiques et ne peuvent s’expliquer sans qu’on procède à une analyse détaillée des données sur la participation et la performance. Nous analysons les tendances provinciales pour ce qui est des différences de participation et de performance dans les cours riches en contenus technologiques chez les étudiants et les étudiantes des écoles publiques de niveau secondaire, et ce à un moment de notre histoire où les compétences technologiques sont essentielles à une pleine participation à la vie culturelle.Notre analyse des inscriptions chez les étudiants et étudiantes de la Colombie Britannique révèle de grandes inégalités frappant les élèves de sexe féminin dans tous les cours à contenus hautement technologiques, sauf dans ceux de gestion des informations (études commerciales) et ceux qui ont trait aux textiles (économie domestique) (Tableaux 1–3). Puisque les étudiantes continuent d’être sous-représentées dans la plupart des cours de technologies, elles ne profitent guère des investissements dont ces cours ont bénéficié. Il y a donc une double inégalité: les cours d’informatique et de technologies industrielles continuent à bénéficier de financements excessifs comparativement aux cours où prédominent les élèves de sexe féminin, et seule une faible partie des étudiantes profitent des avantages accrus que procure la réussite à ces cours. On voit partout la grande variété de cours technologiques à prédominance masculine, à l’exception des cours de gestion des informations et ceux qui ont trait aux textiles. Cette donnée est demeurée essentiellement inchangée malgré une politique explicite de promotion de l’équité sexuelle de la part du ministère de l’Éducation de la Colombie Britannique. En un mot, la situation des étudiantes demeure celle d’une sous-représentation et d’une « ghettisation » disciplinaire. Le statut des élèves de sexe féminin dans les écoles publiques de Colombie Britannique n’a pas évolué au cours des quinze dernières années. Et, bien que notre propos se soit limité au écoles de niveau secondaire, nous estimons que les inégalités dans le domaine des technologies caractérisent l’ensemble du système d’éducation, du curriculum K-12 à la formation des maîtres, sans compter l’emploi (Tableaux 1–3).

Cancer knowledge in the plural: queering the biopolitics of narrative and affective mobilities.

This article takes up the complex project of unthinking neoliberal accounts of a progressive modernity. The authors position their anxieties about an ‘after’ to queer as an affect modality productive of both an opportunity and an obligation to think critically about the move to delimit historically, and as a gesture to an entirely different futurity, the time when queer, and therefore, gay, were organized in a relation of explicit politicization. The authors interrogate celebratory, modernist readings of millennial queer youth narratives where the potentially democratizing significance of the Internet as a cultural technology is deemed constitutive of mobility, play, and possibilities for a redistribution of rights of recognition, communality, and knowledge in a significant public sphere. Drawing on an analysis of research interviews that is framed as ‘anecdotal theory,’ the authors discuss four properties of networked publics – searchability, replicability, persistence, and invisible audiences – not uniquely as properties of technological interfaces, but rather as ‘technologies of otherness.’ Within a modality of critically queer attention, the authors consider the varied and complex precarious mobilities that constitute millennial queer youth narratives.

FOSTERING REFLECTIVITY IN THE ARGUMENTIVE THINKING OF STUDENTS WITH DIFFERENT LEARNING HISTORIES

Abstract This essay provides a queer reading of MySpace (http://www.MySpace.com). The analysis engages how this hugely popular youth site, as exemplar of online peer-to-peer networking, might provide educators and researchers with an ideal location for asking good questions about queer relationalities within hyper-mediated spaces. Social networking sites are changing the way people socialize, are interpellated, and made visible. Significantly, these sites are altering structures of recognizability. The authors asseverate that the significance of social networking sites to queer youth, then, is not helpfully construed as threat, or as trendy cultural accessory, but as constitutive of everyday interstitial locations of engagement and signification to which we need to pay close and careful attention.

Attention to errors and learning: Across-task and across-domain analysis of the postfailure reflectivity measure

In this age of DIY Health—a present that has been described as a time of “ludic capitalism”—one is constantly confronted with the injunction to manage risk by means of making healthy choices and of informed participation in various self-surveillant technologies of bioinformatics. Neoliberal governmentality has been redacted by poststructuralist scholars of bioethics as defined by the two-fold emergence of, on the one hand, populations and on the other, the self-determining individual—as biopolitical entities. In this article, we provide a genealogical-phenomenological schematization (GPS analysis) of the narration of cancer in relation to “sexual minority populations.” Canonical discourses concerning minority sexualities are articulated by means of a logic of “inclusion and reification” that organizes the interiorization of norms of embodied relationality, and a positive liaison with biomedical technologies and techniques in the taking up of a rhetorical style of biographical compliance. Neoliberal DIY Health logics conflate participation with agency, and institute norms of recognition that constrain visibility to: citizens who make healthy choices and manage risk, heroic cancer stories, stories of the reconstruction of states of normalcy, or of survival against all odds. Alternatively, we trace the performative articulations of queer narrative practices that constitute an ephemeral, nomadic praxiology—a doing of knowledge in cancer’s queer narration. Queer cancer narrative practices represent a relationship to health and embodiment that is predicated, not on normalcy, but predicated on troubling norms, on artful failure, and on engaging in a kind of affective mapping that might be thought constitutive of a speculative bioethical relation to the self as other.