"I Heard It From a Good Source": Queer Desire and Homophobia in a South African Higher Education Institution

• In Event: 16.027 - Educators Queering Academia: Critical Memoirs

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
How does one respond to serious, false accusations of abuse and harassment in the workplace? To what extent are higher education institutions complicit in the perpetuation of homophobia in institutional settings that claim to be inclusive? In this paper, I seek to respond to these and other complex questions concerning queer politics in a South African higher education institution. The paper attempts to theorize a career and life-threatening situation in which a colleague accused me, in a class full of postgraduate students, of abusing my powers and my partner, who happened to be a student in the very institution. Unsure about whether to date a student in the same institution in which I taught, I had declared my fears and anxieties to an individual I thought to have been a close friend of mine, not knowing that she would divulge our discussion to another colleague, who would then take the information to her class, presenting lies about my relationship. The paper documents the insidious and overt ways in which institutions undermine processes and policies with the aim of supporting and maintaining heteronormativity. I show how established institutional policies were flouted following my grievance complaint, and how heterosexual privilege dominated the entire process. In exploring these events, I unpack how techniques of power operate at individual and institutional levels to legitimize heteronormativity at the expense of queer desire and human dignity.

Perspectives
I draw on Foucault’s (1975) notion of the panopticon, to explore the various ways in which the sexualities of ‘queer’ academics are surveilled, policed and tactfully controlled in higher education spaces. I also show how higher education spaces are heterosexualised (see Taulke-Johnson, 2008) with same-sex love between student and faculty constructed as “dirty”, “abusive” and other damaging ways.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
The paper is auto-ethnographic, drawing on my own personal experiences, from a subjective point of view. While I concede to the bias that flows from the use of this methodology, I hold that this methodology is useful when telling important, often personal stories which are rarely told. I also intend not to generalize in the discussions.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
The data source for the paper is myself, unpacking my own life experience. I coded my own narrative, reviewing for themes and unpacking overarching tropes. I searched for nuances that had evaded my typical self-understanding.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view: The chapter concludes with a call for the troubling of heterosexual privilege in higher education spaces so as to trouble institutional cultures that collude with the normalisation of homophobic practices and actions.


Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
This work is critical as it opens opportunities for a serious engagement on how queerness is treated in institutional spaces which are supposedly inclusive. This work is also critical given current debates in many western settings on the ethics of staff and student relationships.

Author

• Thabo Msibi, University of KwaZulu-Natal