Creating queer moments at a Brazilian school by forging innovative sociolinguistic scalar perspectives in classrooms

This paper is written at a pivotal time in queer studies. On the one hand, they face a theoretical inflection oriented by the belief that there is no alternative to queer life other than giving in to what may be called "queer negativity". On the other hand, there has been a strong reaction on the part of extremist political and religious groups in many countries against diversity. Such is the case of Brazil where, besides the upsurge of homophobia and racism, these groups have been lobbying against what they refer to as “gender ideology” in education. Nevertheless, more and more teachers have been concerned with queer questions because of students' online-offline LGBTIQ+ experiences and social justice reasons. To this background, this talk reports on a collaborative interventionist research project developed in a Brazilian high school in 2014–2016. More specifically, it focuses on an educational blog designed for the project to promote reflexive discussions on sexuality-based identity-difference dynamics. Of the many interactions carried out by students in this digital environment, we explore one in which ‘queer moments’ (Doty, 1993) are created as students are led into entextualizing-decontextualizing-recontextualizing narratives on sexualities. By tracking the intense textual trajectory movements in which blog participants get involved and by making recourse to a scale-sensitive approach to meaning-making, the analysis of blog posts highlights 1) the fluidity of meaning regarding sexuality; 2) its queer nature; and 3) the way students’ scalar projections indicate an understanding of multiple gender and sexuality performances.

https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/lavlang/2021/sunday/6