ABSTRACT
Adolescence is a volatile concept. It encapsulates contradictory narratives and ideological frameworks, and it channels both normative and queer frequencies. On one hand, it is a life stage characterized by fluidity and nonconformity in which people undergo rapid physical, emotional, and behavioral changes, and continue engaging in the lifelong processes of identifying and experimenting with different avenues of existing in the world. Scholars such as Gabrielle Owen have discerned the primary queer resonances associated with the concept of adolescence, in that it is an aspect of human identity positioned outside of the confines of adulthood. Furthermore, it is
constructed as a temporary state of being that one is expected to move through and eventually leave behind. While some identity categories […] offer the illusion of stability, adolescence is conceptualized as unstable, as transitional, as a time when heterosexuality is practiced but not yet achieved.1
On the other hand, adolescence is often framed as a time of regulation, socialization, and assimilation, in which teens are expected to leave behind “childish” beliefs and practices to cross the threshold into an adulthood that values normative ideological frameworks present at a given time—frameworks that commonly exalt notions such as responsibility, productivity, and reproductive logics.