Pelo sentido da vista: um olhar gay na escola

Abstract

In this dissertation I present a research on students of a public school in Pelotas/RS, discussing the effects of non-normative sexual identities in the curriculum. It s first movement started with discomfort and homophobic attitudes over a singular group of three gay students in the school were I act as a teacher. My main reference is Michel Foucault s thoughts about the historical and discursive construction of concepts such as sexuality, identity, difference and normality which have been serving to create and sustain patterns of conduct. From the interviews with the group of students, I view the obligation of a heterosexual identity in school and some strategies that go through this discourse. I develop my arguments based on the unfixing potential of the group, intending to think about the unthinkable in the curriculum. This work began with the visibility of non-normative sexual identities that escape from the so called rule of compulsory heterosexuality the conception that the heterosexual position comes from nature and it is a human principle , challenging through difference the normalizing and equalizing tendency of education. The way this group of students stands and construct their bodies crosses the borders of the masculine and the feminine, presenting theirselves as difference that escapes from binary classifications and, at the same time, turns unnatural the sexual and gender identities based in biological principles which define males and females. Difference that goes through the norm and it s impossible reducing it to identity, that blurs the separation between nature and culture, showing that there s nothing beyond the last term. In the signification system that is the curriculum, the same time production of identity and difference goes through conceptions and knowledge considered legitimate, justified by medical, biological, anatomic and gender principles. I consider that by showing themselves as difference that confronts the normative sexuality, difference that the curriculum tries to assimilate through its reduction to tolerated diversity; the research subjects take the unexpected to the school, making possible to think about curriculum also as a place of identities deconstruction. In this direction, I consider important to think a kind of non-heteronormative education, that produces differences and deconstruct/construct other identities instead of trying to crystallize them.