‘Hidden Rhythms’ in the Temporal Logics of Same-Sex Marriage and Schooling

Year: 2016

Author: Neary, Aoife

Type of paper: Abstract refereed

Abstract:
Aoife Neary, Department of Education and Professional Studies, University of LimerickIn recent times, nation states across the world have come to be signified as tolerant or intolerant, modern or backward on the basis of their approach to LGBT-Q rights (Richardson 2015). In May 2015, Ireland became the first country in the world to vote in favour of same-sex marriage by popular vote. In the lead up, mainstream political support for same-sex marriage largely employed human rights, inclusion and equality-based arguments that invoked a vision of Ireland as an advanced, modern nation free from its conservative, religious past. The alignment of mainstream and LGBT-Q political goals and the reiteration of a past/present dichotomy in public debates raise questions about what is silenced in and through such normative temporal logics of progressive change. Taking schools as key sites where the public and private nature of these logics coalesce in complex ways, this paper inquires into the ‘hidden rhythms’ of this changing cultural moment — ‘the forms of temporal experience that seem natural to those whom they privilege’ (Zerubavel in Freeman, p. 3). Freeman (2010, p3) alerts us to how ‘chrononormative’ expectations frame linear temporalities of progressive inclusion ensuring people become ‘bound to one another, engrouped, made to feel coherently collective, through particular orchestrations of time’. Drawing on Freeman’s theory of ‘chrononormativity’, this paper interrogates the ‘hidden rhythms’ and everyday negotiations of primary school communities as they experienced and navigated the Marriage Equality Referendum in Ireland. Interviews with a school leader, two teachers and a group of parents in six primary school communities took place in May and June 2015. This paper demonstrates the ways in which chrononormative logics of modernity and progressive change — as espoused in public debates about the Marriage Equality Referendum and echoed in the vast majority of participants in this study — engender ‘a sense of being and belonging that feels natural’ (Freeman 2010, p. 18). However, I identify and discuss various fissures in this apparent coherence, providing an empirical illustration of the ways in which chrononormative and ‘natural’ temporal logics of progress flatten the lived ambivalences of gender and sexuality in schools.ReferencesFreeman, E. (2010) Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories Durham and London: Duke University Press.Richardson, D. (2015) ‘Rethinking Sexual Citizenship’, Sociology, 1-17.

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