The Power and Literacies of Mexico City Street Dancing

• In Event: 65.080 - Roundtable Session 24
  In Roundtable Session: 65.080-6 - Creating Drama Beyond Colonial Enclosures: School Gardens, Storytelling, and Dancing

Abstract

Purposes of the qualitative study were to explore hybrid literacies in Mexico City of an inter-generational group who dance in the streets using both ancient and contemporary communication concepts and practices and to examine the relations of these concepts and practices to power. Research questions were: (a) what literacies were available to the participants, (b) how did participants transform, accommodate, or resist those literacies, and (c) how can these literacies be viewed in relation to power? Ethnomethodological data were collected, which included field notes, observations, and interviews. Data were mapped, traced, and analyzed using Derridean concepts. Findings include what participants considered as “rescuing their roots” was entangled with other, and sometimes similar, totalizing ideas, practices, and structures.

Author

• Jonathan Eakle, George Washington University