Embodied Failure: Resisting Gender and Sexuality Erasures in K–12 Schools

• In Event: Queering Learning and Teaching for/With Youth

Abstract

This theoretical analysis considers Halberstam’s concept of failure (2011) as a way of resisting hegemonic narratives about success and how it is culturally defined. As suggested by Halberstam’s use of failure, the limitations or undesirable elements of failure reside in rigid institutional definitions of success. As such, I will examine the failure of adults and institutions in queer and trans youth lives, and how uncreative and limiting rules and roles within schools require youth to experience failure. Using an understanding of failure as a particularly queer epistemology and ontology, I look at adults aspiring to be collaborators and accomplices to youth, either achieving solidarity with youth, or failing in these roles for LGBTQ+ young people.

Author

• Darla Linville, Augusta University