• View
• Edit
• History
• Print

LGBTQ Approaches to Rhetoric and Composition Annotated Bibliography

Performativity and Passing

In their essay, Conrad and Crawford discuss the notion of passing within a “lesbigay-positive pedagogy” (153). They encourage students to engage in discussions of identity illuminating the “mutual interdependencies of homo- and heterosexuality, queer and straight culture” (161). Conrad and Crawford also discuss honesty and whether or not passing is a trick at students’ expense. They however refute this and assert that passing is a necessary act and political stance. They state, “The politics of disclosure, then, require us as teachers not simply to pass—as straight or queer—or to be out, but to prevent queerness from passing out of the realm of the classroom and productive ideological work” (161).

In this article, Kopelson discusses the notion of queer and queer identity in relation to performativity. She explains that “from a queer or performative perspective, coming out in the classroom may be counterproductive because it is to write ourselves into existing identity categories and all the narratives that surround and support them” (21). Kopelson essentially argues against dichotomies—problematizing the binary of homosexual and heterosexual. She states that coming out homosexual is “to come out as heterosexuality’s oppositional other, it cannot disturb the binary logic that surrounds sexuality, nor the attendant process of privileging and devaluing that surrounds this particular and every other pervasive binary system” (22). Because of his dichotomy and its implications, Kopelson argues for the strategic use of and identification with queer.

In this essay, Kopelson discusses her use of performative pedagogy in her class. She gives personal experiences in order to support and critique her own practices. In performing “a certain amount of ambiguity with regard to [her] sexual self—[she] never really ‘come[s] out’ in the classroom” (563). Kopelson acknowledges critiques of the practice of ambiguity, what she states Elliott calls “self-effacement” (567). Kopelson refutes these claims in asserting that the performance of ambiguity can be an effective strategy for undermining heterosexism and can “infuse academia with unanticipated, productively confusing, indeterminate modes of subjectivity” (567). She supports performative pedagogy, but with conscious efforts to ensure her preformed neutrality does not make her “disappear” from her classroom (566).

In her essay, Kopelson argues for a performative approach to teaching. She states that “the performance of the very neutrality that students expect from their (composition) instructors, and from education more generally, can become a rhetorically savvy, politically responsive and responsible pedagogical tactic that actually enhances students’ engagement with difference and that minimizes their resistance to difference in the process” (5). She discusses student resistance towards difference and its impact on receptivity, using neutrality and passing as a means to bypass this resistance. She explains that she understands the difficulty of navigating neutrality, which has been historically repressive, but claims that the neutrality she advocates is “deliberate, reflective, [and] self-conscious” (5), not assigned without agency.

Discourse and Discourse Communities

In her essay, Ford addresses the question “Are there similar challenges in implementing Queer Pedagogy to classroom participants between academic and community educators, and if so, are there areas where cross-sectoral strategizing could improve the development of Queer Pedagogy?” (2). She explores answers to this question in examination of the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto’s Working with LGBT Youth training and academic queer theory and how they converge to create successful queer pedagogies. She highlights several barriers both academic and community based education programs face, for example, queer teacher’s exhaustive feeling at being the sole teachers of queer pedagogy and both teachers and student’s hesitance to pedagogies “implicat[ing] [them] in systems of oppression” (22). But despite these barriers, Ford asserts that a collective examination and implementation of queer pedagogy “can create excellent opportunities for social change by working together to create organizational change and educational practices that will facilitate social change” (23).

In this essay, Ironstone-Catterall addresses difficulties within the rhetoric of AIDS activism. In order to understand these difficulties, Ironstone-Catterall maps out the history of queer responses to contemporary AIDS discourses. She states that it is her goal “to look to the ways that these responses and rhetorics have helped to shape queer politicality, and to provide the tools for thinking about the fault-lines of liberal-democracy as it pertains to queer identities and pedagogies” (3). She especially focuses on the notions of public and private and how these divided rhetorics have been, thus far, inadequate. Citing Ann Cvetkovich, Ironstone-Catterall states that in blurring the lines between private and public rhetorical response, “affective life can be seen to pervade public life” (2).

In her book, Malinowitz discusses her experience conducting a class centered on gay and lesbian experience. This class consisted of both LGBTQ and heterosexual student writers. Malinowitz grounds her study in her personal belief that being out is of political importance (8). With this in mind, Malinowitz sets off to establish a classroom environment and composition pedagogy in which it is safe for students to be out. She states that “Leaving sexual identity out of the classroom is not an accident; it is an expression of institutionalized homophobia, enacted in classrooms not randomly but systematically, with legal and religious precedents to bolster it and intimidate both teachers and students” (23). Helping students confront this institutionalization of homophobia through writing and class discussion brings sexual identity into the classroom (perhaps for the first time) and reaffirms marginalized voices.

In her text, Malinowitz takes a unique approach: different from many other LGBTQ composition theorists, she actually puts the focus of her work back on the students. She provides four cases studies of students, who had varying experience in her course. These case studies give an insightful look into how her pedagogical practices are actually being conceptualized and utilized by students. Because of the student centered approach to this text, students’ agency is not overshadowed, displaced, or forgotten.