Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemBecoming boy: A/effecting identity in a Catholic boys' school( 2015)This thesis examines how identities are effected specific to time and space. In particular, I consider different masculine student identities enacted by boys in a Catholic boys’ school. Motivated by my own experiences as a teacher in such a school, I address the dominant masculinity of the school, and how student masculinities are formed not only within this masculinity, but also how other student masculinities come into (and out of) existence. In considering how different masculine identities continually come together, and move apart, within and between school spaces, I draw on Deleuze’s concept of the assemblage, as understood through feminist new materialist notions of the posthuman. Through a post-qualitative autoethnography, I map the assemblages of my own encounters with student masculinities as a teacher in a Catholic boys’ school. In so doing, I consider three events and the masculine identities that are un/made through the affective flows that de/compose them. I attempt to locate myself and my own affective capacity within this entangled research-assemblage, considering the role that my own feminine-teacher position has played in events, and in knowledge production. In understanding identity as an affective assemblage, I suggest identity is nuanced and contextual, continually brought into being by specific acts and their effects at particular moments in time and space. Ultimately, this thesis recognises student masculine identities in a Catholic boys’ school as constituted (and de-constituted) through affective flows. It finds masculinity is multiple and contextual, that it comes together fleetingly, and can (but not always) dissipate just as quickly. It provides a means for thinking about identity through attention to the elements that make up an assemblage, including the non-human. Deleuze’s positive ontology makes possible a more nuanced understanding of identity as formed in the moment, contingent on time, space and context. Theorising identity in this way can contribute to improved social justice in the micropolitical practices of schools and their pedagogies, and to a politics through which dominant identities can be displaced. I seek appreciation for the many masculine student identities enacted within specific times and spaces, and to shift away from boys’ school practices that presume only one understanding of masculine identity.