Abstract
ABSTRACT The #metoo movement has led to countless revelations of sexual misconduct across the globe. Schools have not been immune from such allegations and elite private boys’ schools in particular have featured prominently. In this paper, we explore the recollections of alumni from elite private schools in Australia and analyse the ways in which they were socialised by everyday schooling practices and forms of schoolboy homosociality. This paper approaches these socialities through Foucault’s notion of heterotopias and advances understandings of how profane schoolboy cultures have persisted despite societal changes in the gender order. We contend that elite private boys’ school practices energise modes of peer-relating that are more dangerous than they appear on the surface, because profane incidents can be hidden by myth-making that accompanies the taboo, but also by the ability of subterranean practice to make those admitted to these social niches as well as bystanders complicit in its construction.
Published Version
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