It takes more than two to (multispecies) tango: Queering gender texts in environmental education

Abstract

ABSTRACTUsing the figuration of queer tango, we conceive this essay as a performance that responds to three Canadian Journal of Environmental Education articles, each of which calls for the creation and circulation of more queer scholarship in environmental education. We explore Vagle's (2015) suggestion of working along the edges and margins of phenomenology using poststructuralist concepts and ideas, with a view to engaging with J. Russell's (2013) phenomenological interpretation of queer theory, with particular reference to Sara Ahmed's (2006) phenomenological exploration of “(dis)orientation.” Although Vagle (2015) uses the Deleuzean concepts of multiplicity and line of flight to explore the phenomenological notion of intentionality, we suggest that engaging other, somewhat lesser used, Deleuzean concepts might better pair with J. Russell's (2013) use of the phenomenological ideas of orientation and embodied experiences. Thus, we draw on the Deleuzean creative conceptions of the molar/molecular, body without organs, and assemblages to queer(y) phenomenological notions of subjects, objects, lived bodies, and (dis)orientations. Through our inquiry, we found that dancing around the edges of phenomenology requires a redrawing of the boundaries of subjectivity and objectivity that moves from the individual to the collective, from static objects to material-semiotic generative nodes. Our provocation is that such a queer dance—one that prods and probes the geometries and optics of relationality (Barad, 2003)—can not only reinvigorate environmental education scholarship but also help to reimagine curriculum as a collective inquiry into the practices of enacting and policing boundaries.