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Performativity and Passing LGBTQ Approaches Annonated 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.