Narrativas docentes: as performances de professores gays

Abstract

The present study investigated the performances of gay teachers in an interior of Paraíba. Through their narratives, the general objective was to understand how they have transited in the educational space, and the performances they develop. This work is linked to the research line of Cultural Studies in Education, of the Graduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Paraíba. The concepts of gender and sexualities, as well as the idea of performances and performativities deduced by Butler (2019, 2020a, 2020b, 2022) and Borba (2014) are more emphatically triggered in the development of writing. In addition to this discussion, the text is based on the contributions of authors such as Louro (2019, 2020), Junqueira (2013, 2022), Seffner (2011, 2013), Sell (2006), Miskolci (2020), among others/ those that fomented the discussion established here. The research is of a qualitative type, carried out through a case study. For that, six teachers who declared themselves gay and work in public and/or private schools in the city of Mamanguape/PB were interviewed. From the demands arising from this work, I used the narrative interview as a data generation tool, and for analysis I resorted to the Signification Nuclei. The research showed an educational scenario still linked to the dictates of heteronormativity, thus, two situations were detected, on the one hand, teachers who affirm their sexuality, as a way of confronting and conquering new spaces, and on the other, teachers who keep their sexualities hidden, as a form of protection against prejudice and discrimination. It was evidenced the discourse still present in the school walls that favors heterosexuality, which warns about how we take it as a standard of normality. Since it is not questioned or asked about its constitutive processes, in the same way that homosexuality is required to say about itself and justify itself, in this direction, it is important that research that takes non-heteronormative sexualities as their object of study, intend questions about heterosexuality, making the norm speak, taking it out of its comfort zone and provoking them in the reflections that we develop.