The paper presents data from a case study of a non-traditional secondary school for disadvantaged girls (the majority of whom are Indigenous Australian) located in a suburban area of Queensland (Australia). The paper focuses predominantly on the philosophies and practices of ‘Jenny’; one of the school’s Indigenous teachers. Her story highlights the significance of subversive genealogy in both constituting her strong political identity as an Indigenous woman and in developing a pedagogical approach that supports her students’ cultural awareness and political agency. Jenny's approach is analysed in light of the significant role marginalised women's life writings, their genealogies, can play in disrupting taken-for-granted ‘truths’ about race and gender through giving voice to alternative knowledges obscured and silenced within dominant narratives of history (Moreton-Robinson, 2000; Mirza, 1997; Mohanty, 2003). Foucault’s theorising of the subject through genealogy (Foucault, 1986; 1988) - a theorising particularly useful for many feminists (for example, Weedon, 1987; Sawicki, 1991) - supports this analysis in terms of enabling an identification and troubling of the inequitable power relations that marginalise on the basis of gender and race. This theorising highlights the social processes that produce particular truths and reveals the discursive relations that constitute subjectivity so that the subject is able to reflect upon and resist the very discursive relations that constitute her (Tamboukou, 2003). Jenny’s political identity and pedagogy are analysed and understood through these lenses. The paper foregrounds the capacity of Jenny's subversive genealogy to rebel against and resignify the ways in which Indigenous women and girls have been defined and classified within dominant gendered and racist paradigms (see Mirza, 1997).

In illustrating the significance of this pedagogical approach, the paper draws on corroborative data from another Indigenous staff member at the school, ‘Monica’; a youth worker and former student. Like many of the students at the school, Monica comes from a troubled and dislocated family and educational background. The paper identifies how Indigenous genealogies support Monica’s cultural awareness and political agency, and more specifically, provide her with an opportunity to know and critically reflect on her discursive constitution in ways that enable a disruption and transformation of her negative past.

Through these stories the paper’s key objective is to present political genealogy as a highly generative theoretical and pedagogical tool for supporting the subversive agency of marginalised and disadvantaged girls and women. While focused on Australia, the relations of power and marginality presented in the paper share clear resonance with other (especially Western) contexts. To these ends, the paper is explicitly configured with an international audience in mind and thus draws attention to the broad theoretical and political relevance of its findings on the subversive potential of genealogy pedagogy.

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