Doing whiteness: On the performative dimensions of race in the classroom

Abstract

While many scholars study whiteness as ideology, where the body is completely denied, or as materiality, where the body stands as the sole communicative marker of race, I examine whiteness in this essay through performativity‐a theoretical approach that accounts for both the material and ideological by situating the material body as a product of reiterative acts. This critical ethnographic study explores how students in an entry level communication classroom performatively constitute whiteness as a privileged cultural category. Through analysis of public performances, I consider the ways whiteness gets reified and normalized, all while remaining under‐examined as a site of investigation.

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