Cishetero Sucker Punches: Educational Necropolitics, Consent, and Sonic Possibilities
Abstract
At the time that the narrative foregrounded in this paper was collected, Ray (a pseudonym) identified as a transgender student who was living in a conservative area in the Midwest, this article explores the theoretical and practical implications enmeshed in sonic ethnographic work (Gershon, 2017; Wozolek, 2023) and curriculum theorizing as they are in relation to what the author calls critical consent curricula (Wozolek, 2024). The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, this work theorizes how critical consent curricula should be nested and layered across schools and virtually every intra-action (Barad 2007) that students, faculty, and staff encounter. Second, this paper argues that employing critical consent curricula is but one way to interrupt what I have named educational necropolitics (author 2021; author in press). By educational necropolitics, I mean the many ways that schools—and those who participate in them—decide whose ways of being, knowing, and doing can survive and thrive in schools and whose ontoepistemologies will be choked away and, possibly, murdered through systems of schooling. The author argues that these curricula should be embedded across systems of schooling and are but one way to interrupt educational necropolitics that pervade every aspect of young people’s experiences in schools. The focus here is on the violence that emerges from necropolitical norms often results in daily sucker punches that resonate across and against minoritized youth’s ways of being, knowing, and doing. By listening deeply to Ray’s narrative, this paper is a call to find ways to resist and refuse violence through consent curricula so that queer futurities become the sonic grounds that undergird everyday experiences in school.
Presentation Description
N/A
Location
Room 2
Publication Type and Release Option
Presentation (Open Access)
Recommended Citation
Wozolek, Boni, "Cishetero Sucker Punches: Educational Necropolitics, Consent, and Sonic Possibilities" (2025). Curriculum Studies Summer Collaborative. 19.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cssc/2025/2025/19
Cishetero Sucker Punches: Educational Necropolitics, Consent, and Sonic Possibilities
Room 2
At the time that the narrative foregrounded in this paper was collected, Ray (a pseudonym) identified as a transgender student who was living in a conservative area in the Midwest, this article explores the theoretical and practical implications enmeshed in sonic ethnographic work (Gershon, 2017; Wozolek, 2023) and curriculum theorizing as they are in relation to what the author calls critical consent curricula (Wozolek, 2024). The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, this work theorizes how critical consent curricula should be nested and layered across schools and virtually every intra-action (Barad 2007) that students, faculty, and staff encounter. Second, this paper argues that employing critical consent curricula is but one way to interrupt what I have named educational necropolitics (author 2021; author in press). By educational necropolitics, I mean the many ways that schools—and those who participate in them—decide whose ways of being, knowing, and doing can survive and thrive in schools and whose ontoepistemologies will be choked away and, possibly, murdered through systems of schooling. The author argues that these curricula should be embedded across systems of schooling and are but one way to interrupt educational necropolitics that pervade every aspect of young people’s experiences in schools. The focus here is on the violence that emerges from necropolitical norms often results in daily sucker punches that resonate across and against minoritized youth’s ways of being, knowing, and doing. By listening deeply to Ray’s narrative, this paper is a call to find ways to resist and refuse violence through consent curricula so that queer futurities become the sonic grounds that undergird everyday experiences in school.
