I really appreciated the look at gender and queerness in relation to plagiarism, and the way that Moore Howard at the end gives the reader separate language in the form of fraud, insufficient citation, and excessive repetition. I had almost thought we weren’t going to receive those tools when she said “I hate cheating” thinking that again, cheating has a sexual component of infidelity. I feel like I am constantly trying to undermine the master narrative presented in classrooms, where white, cis, heterosexual, male, able bodied people are seen as dominant and in the right. The power structure that I feel that lends itself well to is a culture of fear and punishment.

Michele Foucault in Discipline and Punish talks about the structures of prison to be observational, so the inmates are always watched. In The History of Sexuality he turns this observational gaze onto students, describing the setup for boarding schools where all the children (Foucault spoke to young men primarily) could see each other or not see each other. This feeling of being observed, for me, is tied into ideas of control, or Althusser’s ISA (an ideological state apparatus that compels people to conform to the norming of society), and if people do not consent (can it be called that?) to the norm, they are punished.

For me, the idea of punishment in the classroom is a struggle. I’d like to leave aside large behaviors that I would feel compelled to punish severely—sexism, racism, queerphobia—in favor of smaller, trickier transgressions, like being on their phone often, not paying attention, being loud to the point of distracting other students, not working in class, and other issues that disrupt the learning environment. I think of Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication book at this point, where students come up with their own solution to this issue; when a student becomes disruptive, they can elect to go to a separate room until they’re ready to rejoin the class, while still being responsible for the work that is being done. Rather than being a silver bullet (now I’m questioning that imagery as warlike, and related to the mythology of werewolves), I think the conversation, rather than the chosen solution, is the key to helping have a consent-based classroom that moves away from the strong forces of the patriarchy, heteronormativity, and white supremacy in our culture.

P.S. Thinking of the questions regarding Dr. King’s citations, while I noted who I referenced, I intentionally did not put page numbers or quotes. I wonder if, rather than being let to slide by because of his race, Dr. King was singled out for referencing knowledge the establishment would have seen as typical of a white man, but theft when presented by a black man.