Greek Lesbian Teachers: School, Nation, Family

Abstract

This dissertation is the first to engage with the subjectivity of Greek lesbian teachers and provides an interview-based analysis of the life narratives of seventeen lesbian women who work within the Greek educational system. It asks how Greek lesbian teachers construct their subjectivities and negotiate their sexuality in relation to the social contexts in which they are situated. The dissertation is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter, I explore the ways in which the lesbian teachers in this study narrate their daily experiences and practices in their working environment, arguing that school functions not only as a place of marginalisation and discipline, but also as a Foucauldian crisis heterotopia that accommodates subjects in transition. The second chapter looks at the representation of Greek lesbian teachers through the prism of crypto-colonialism, demonstrating how representations are often invested with racial and Western-centric narratives. In the third and final chapter, I examine the negotiating practices of coming out that the teachers, as daughters, adopt within the context of their families, and most notably with their mothers. In concluding, I demonstrate how I have been able to map locations in terms of power, not only as restrictive (potestas), but also as empowering (potentia) in the lesbian teachers’ subject formation.