Between Equivocity and Univocity: Sexuality Education for a People Yet to Come

This thesis is an experimental speculative inquiry aimed at opening possibilities for thinking sexuality education otherwise. It begins by examining Aotearoa’s sexuality education in terms of its metaphysics. It makes a problem of the equivocal ontology that orders sexuality education and from there speculatively rethinks sexuality education differently, innovatively, in terms of a new metaphysics. This ontological problem is not with being itself but with the notion of ontological priority. A divisible ground is necessary for ontology to emerge and ontology reinstates this division. To think ‘ground’, there must be that which is not ground. To think ‘first cause’, there must be a reference point against which first can be distinguished. This requires a movement away from the indistinguishable, a separation. This separation, in tandem with claims of primacy, sets up a hierarchy of being that is inherently violent, that privileges one side of the division at the expense of the other. Such a violence structures Aotearoa’s sexuality education. To overcome the violence, this becoming thesis thinks with Deleuzian feminist philosophers of difference to push equivocity to its limits and realise, instead, a univocity of being. The thesis writer’s task has been to run up against the limits of her thinking to think otherwise about sexuality education. My ambition is not to extend or add something to sexuality education but rather rethink Aotearoa’s sexuality education as a whole, in terms of the new orientation proffered by new materialisms. In moving towards the new, the old ways are (re)membered. In the final act of the thesis, a reoriented sexuality education arrives in the form of bodylabs – spaces for immanent sexuality education practices that meet the diverse needs of a people already here and a people yet to come. Bodylabs provide a glimpse of a fleeting and dynamic sexuality outside the hierarchal regimes of humanism, modernity and normalcy.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Philosophy

Grantor dc:publisher

ResearchSpace@Auckland

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Cameron-Lewis, Vanessa

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Grant, Barbara
• Locke, Kirsten
• Mika, Carl

Statement dc:rights

• Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2292/65427

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchspace.auckland.ac.nz:2292/65427