Positioning queer in adult education: Intervening in politics and praxis in North America

In this paper w/e provide a North American perspective as w/e explore the formation and comprehension of queer knowledge in adult education and in larger sociocultural contexts. W/e consider the need to position queer in adult education mindful of how queer is historically and currently positioned in culture and society. In doing so, w/e articulate queer-a term representing our spectral community that incorporates a diversity of sex, sexual, and gender differences-and queerness: our ways of being, believing, desiring, becoming, belonging, and acting in life-and-learning spaces. Then w/e turn to queer history and queer studies to investigate queer knowledge as fugitive knowledge integral and informative to our project to transgress the social and reconstitute the cultural in adult education as a field of study and practice. W/e locate queer knowledge as an antecedent to queer praxis, and focus on inclusive queer praxis as a transgressive practice-expression-reflection dynamic and a site of transformative learning.