Dancing with Social Ghosts: Performing Embodiments, Analyzing Critically

Abstract

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.4

Poetics of Justice: Using Art as Action and Analysis in Participatory Action Research

“…Art expands the ways in which we can make sense of and understand our data (Fox, 2012;2015;Roberts, 2013). It grounds the analysis in the human experience and reattaches the emotional to the political and the scientific aspects of social science research (Conrad, 2004;Conrad, et al, 2015;jones et al, 2015;Solorzano & Yosso, 2002).…”

“…The joy and pain of the work cannot be painted over with the broad brush of objectivism, but need to be integrated, and offered a chance at explicit expression, rather than a light coating of presumed neutrality (Fals Borda, 2001). This has been described as theorizing from the flesh (Moraga & Anzaldua, 1984), embodied analysis (Fox, 2012;2015;Roberts, 2013), and creative praxis (Cammarota & Fine, ISSN 2470-6353 Spring 2016…”

“…Traditional social science research often tells us to ignore this process of embodied analysis because it may taint research findings and run counter to research goals (Fox, 2015). In PAR work, where participation and action are valued equally to the research, such embodied knowledge is critical to carrying out work that is responsible to collectives and to larger communities (Lykes, 2013;Roberts, 2013;Stoudt, Fox, & Fine, 2012).…”

“…In the opening poem, the author, a high school student and member of an intergenerational research team, articulated the visceral experience of a proposed policy that would require high school students in New Jersey to pass additional standardized tests to graduate. She used the imagery of trickling sweat, bloodshot eyes, clenched teeth, and pounding hearts to illustrate the kinds of responses that manifest in the bodies of youth (Roberts, 2013;Ruglis, 2011). Using the art form of spoken word, she described what the stress of meeting new requirements could look and feel like for students affected by the proposed policy.…”

“…Using the physical body, the visual world, the spiritual, to express, process and analyze research findings can represent moves towards restorative actions (Kapitan, Litell, & Torres, 2011;Lara, 2002;Lykes, 2013;Rivera, et al, 2010;Roberts, 2013). We explore the role of art as an analytic tool, an expression of resistance and social critique, and part of a collective meaning-making (Fox, 2015) process in the context of a participatory action research (PAR) project.…”