"En människa är det". En queerdidaktisk analys av Jessica Schiefauers "Pojkarna" och dess möjligheter för arbete med likabehandling i skolan

Abstract

This text aims to examine how teaching in literature can contribute to the schools work with creating an antidiscriminating environment. When it comes to the Swedish schools antidiscrimination plans, this essay focuses especially on those sections that concerns pupils and student right to their own gender identity and expression. The main theories in this examination are Judith Butler’s theory on gender and performativity, queer theory defined by Fanny Ambjörnsson and theories concerning adolescent psychology with focus on the adolescent identity and it’s forming. Together with Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnival theory the text examines how Jessica Schiefauer’s novel Pojkarna (The Boys; 2012) describes a young adolescent girl’s journey to finding and forming her own gender and sexual identity. The analysis shows how the book visualize three important categories: girl and boy culture, disguise as a subversive act and, finally, the ambivalence within the human. In the didactical analysis Kevin Kumashiro’s antioppressive view on pedagogics is the main theory. This theory, combined with the analysis of the novel, shows how teaching in literature opens up opportunities to read and talk about literature with a norm critical eye, where the queer and intersectional view on “the Other” works as a way to help pupils and students to become more tolerant towards that which isn’t seen as normal or expected, and to humanize words and concepts that otherwise works suppressant.