The GED as Transgender Literacy: Performing in the Learning/Acquisition Borderland

This article uses James Paul Gee’s distinction between acquisition and learning to consider the context of GED tutoring in a correctional facility. It draws on the notion of performance, as defined in Judith Butler’s work and in queer theory, to consider the ways that literacy and identity are performed in the space of the prison. Arguing that Butler’s broader definition of performance, while helpful, reads identity out of literacy, the article proposes a notion of transgender literacy that shows how the confluence of “distance” and “similarity” can offer a useful way of rereading literacy in institutional spaces.