Girls' portraits of desire: picturing a missing discourse |
| |
Authors: | Louisa Allen |
| |
Institution: | Faculty of Education , University of Auckland , Auckland , New Zealand |
| |
Abstract: | This paper revisits the missing discourse of female desire Fine, M. 1988. Sexuality, schooling and adolescent females: The missing discourse of desire. Harvard Educational Review 58, no. 1: 29–53] in secondary schools. Instead of echoing previous studies that have documented how female desire is missing, this research starts from the premise that female desire is an everyday (unofficial) presence at school. Through photo-diaries and photo-elicitation, this paper attempts to materialise Butler, J. 1993. Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of ‘sex’. New York: Routledge] female desire to literally ‘see it’ through young women's own eyes. In articulation with feminist debates around young women's exercise of agency, it argues that in relation to female sexual desire, this may look different from what we expect. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari 2004. Anti-oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Trans. B. Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press], it explores how ruptures to normative female desire are constantly reterritorialised and subsequently more ‘frustrated’ than claims of easily perceptible change. In this way, it seeks to add to a more nuanced and complex theorisation of female desire at school, rather than only as an absence or a problem. |
| |
Keywords: | post-structural theory sociology femininities sexualities education heterosexualities Australasia and the Pacific Rim secondary education |
|
|