Queer pedagogies are often positioned as anti-normative and anti-oppressive, going-against-the-grain of hetero- and cisnormative forms of teaching and learning. Recent developments in queer and trans theories, however, have begun to recalibrate such praxis beyond normative/anti-normative binaries, while still retaining their critical edge. Thinking with these developments, the purpose of this work-in-progress is to explore how representations of queerness in select sitcoms (Schitt's Creek and Derry Girls) enact a queer pedagogy that achieves its effects by troubling how normative/anti-normative binaries typically sustain themselves. On this, I point to the pedagogical role irony, sarcasm, and camp play in exposing audiences to other ways of representing queerness that exceed zero-sum logics of the margin and the centre. I conclude with some notes on the pedagogical significance of laughter, homing in on its capacity to disrupt unequal distributions of heteronormative power without reifying categories of the powerful and the powerless.
Dr Seán Henry is a Lecturer in Education at the Department of Secondary and Further Education, Edge Hill University. His research explores questions of gender, sexuality, religion, and education from a philosophical perspective. He is the author of a forthcoming monograph with Routledge entitled Queer Thriving in Religious Schools.