Perspektiven queerer Bildungsarbeit

Abstract

This article departs from the outing of professional football player Thomas Hitzlesperger in 2014 – an event that was widely embraced by the media that attempted to celebrate diversity when in fact it reassured heteronormativity. I argue for a queer understanding of life and living and the necessity to deconstruct the current scheme of unquestioned normativity (that works in the dichotomy of self and other). While I see education as the key tool in that process, I also recognize that little material is available to educators to sensitively approach queer issues. Here I share my “pedagogy of diverse ways of living” (Pädagogik vielfältiger Lebensweisen), some of the material I use and the guidelines I developed. I argue for a productive deconstruction of current naturalized and essentialized identities in a continuous awareness of the traps that any form of deconstruction employs.