Dissenting Fictions

Explored in the telling stories of five, middle §adulthood gay men, is the relatively uncharted §terrain of the dynamic relationship between literacy §and sexual identities. The reconstructed narratives §of the participants draw the reader into the §landscape of the informant s worlds and reveal §similarities, patterns, tensions, contradictions and §fissures in the ways that literacy and identity get §practiced within socio-cultural and socio-sexual §contexts. The use of stories as theories, provide a §multi-layered analysis that indicate how socio-§sexual identifications were negotiated through §literacy practices in adolescence and how knowledge §about homosexuality is routinely constructed within §communities of practice. It was through the Queering §of texts that the logic of(hetero)normative §practices of everyday life were displaced and §disrupted and it is argued that the need for a §Queering of texts is part of a critical and §emancipatory agenda in educational domains.