Subverting Whiteness: Pedagogy at the Crossroads of Performance, Culture, and Politics

Students in our classes, which focus on communication and cultural/sexual difference, performance studies, and communication and the classroom, often ask about the end of political critique—that is, to what future do we do this critical work? For instance, when we talk to our students about current events in class (i.e., the lynching-style murder of James Byrd, Jr., the beating-execution of Matthew Shepard, or the shooting death of Amadou Diallo on the streets of New York by police), we try to understand not only the effects of these instances of cultural violence (how it shapes and produces a public), but to also ask questions about the contexts that breed these tragedies. Thus, our effort is to locate the specific events within larger, more systemic social systems. For instance, can we understand the Matthew Shepard incident as a result of a social system of heterosexism, homophobia, and straight supremacy? Can we see the death of Diallo not as an isolated instance of racial violence, but as part of a larger social system that has produced deaths in places like Cincinnati and Los Angeles?

To do this work, we look outward from these spectacular instances of violence and examine the minute and mundane processes that make these acts possible. In our courses, we examine how instances of racism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression are generated through everyday communicative/performative acts—that is, both aesthetic and reiterative. Thus, we seek to understand difference (specifically race) as a performative construct that is always already aesthetic (that is, constructed for an audience or public) and reiterative (that is, repeated and ongoing). By focusing on race as one form of oppression, we examine whiteness as a systematic production of power—as a normative social process based upon a history of domination, recreating itself through naturalized everyday acts—much like heteronormativity or misogyny. Though in this writing we address whiteness, in particular, as a system of power and privilege, such an exploration helps mark the unmarked (Phelan)—making visible the workings of a number of oppressive social relationships. To render whiteness visible requires careful analysis and constant critique of our taken-for-granted norms. But, as our students question, to what end do we do what we do?

We both base our courses, at least in part, in critical race theory, asking how systems of power are reiterated and reaffirmed through our collective communicative, performative, and aesthetic interactions. The foundation of critical race theory and cultural studies means that we infuse all course content with issues of power, refusing to allow matters of race and difference to be marginalized. These courses look at education, theatre, and everyday communication, as well as other sites such as popular culture or identity. The seemingly simple question we are often asked stands now as the premise of this essay—if these theories and critiques are useful, then where does that leave us in terms of sketching out visions of hope and change? As one student said, if you just tear down social norms, then where do we all stand? This essay is our stand—it is a documenting of how we are making a particular, ongoing research project matter in our lives (and we hope, as a result, in the lives of others). It is a documenting of performance-based research—a mode of research that asks students and other participants to enter into the space of performance and seek possibility as they are engaging in critical theory. What we document here is a problem-posing performance workshop, based in the critical work of Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal, that seeks to intervene in the reiterative process of whiteness. It is a response to bell hooks and others who have asked for a critical examination of whiteness not only through the bodies and voices of people of color, but through white...