Dancing with Social Ghosts: Performing Embodiments, Analyzing Critically

• Published in: Transforming anthropology Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 4 - 14
• Main Author: Roberts, Rosemarie A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Arlington Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.04.2013; The University of Chicago Press
• Subjects: Cultural anthropology; Dance; Embodiment; Hip hop culture; Knowledge; Social Science Research
• ISSN: 1051-0559; 1548-7466
• DOI: 10.1111/traa.12002

This study traces and analyses gestures, postures, and movements in hip‐hop dance to examine circulations of physicalized histories, experiences, and affects of Black and Brown bodies as productions of knowledge. The significance of Black and Brown embodiments as excess that accumulates over time when their presence is undertheorized, concealed, or sidestepped is considered. At the intersection of theory and methodology, a framework of embodiment is presented toward imagining the possibilities that can be created in qualitative social science research when Black and Brown bodies are acknowledged as sites of knowledge production and when critical embodiments are accessed and confronted rather than evacuated.