Abstract
In this chapter I consider how, through a Butlerian lens, race operates as a performative. As a performative, race can be understood as citations of discourses and norms. A racial performative subjectivates the subject on racial terms. A performative is perceived to be ‘real’ in some sense, through the accumulation of both explicit and implicit speech acts, or citations of norms, which create the illusion of naturalness. I present data from educational projects and explore firstly how whiteness is performatively constituted by senior school staff, in this case as absence, as cultural oppression and as privilege. I consider secondly how whiteness and blackness are performatively constituted via student narratives around ‘acting white’ and ‘acting black’, which challenge the fixidity of race to bodies.
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Chadderton, C. (2018). Making Whiteness and Acting White: The Performativity of Race and Race as a Performative. In: Judith Butler, Race and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73365-4_5
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