Defining an Embodied Approach to Racialization within Exotic Dance

• In Event: 2167 - Analyses of Urban and Rural Spaces, and Racialized Sexual and Gender Identities

Abstract

Through the analysis of two years of ethnographic observations (January 2016-December 2017) and 26 in-depth interviews with queer women of color exotic dancers (who I refer to collectively as “Divine Dancers”), this study centers the temporal space of Divine Dancers’ exotic dance shows to uncover how this particular space enables, constricts, and ultimately shapes embodied expressions of erotic agency. Central to the theoretical framing of this inquiry is an embodied approach to racialization, through which the underpinnings of racialization relative to African-American and Puerto Rican participants are elucidated. This article revisits the Sex Wars of the 1970s and 80s to shift erotic labor discourse away from heteronormative exchanges to the queer context of Divine Dancers shows. In doing so, I center the experiences of queer women of color as they manage their participation with Divine Dancers by deploying racialized constructs as embodied cues for increased racialized erotic capital.

Author

• Cristina Khan, University of Connecticut