Performativity of race intersected by gender and sexuality in a conversation circle among black women

Abstract

In this article, I intend to mobilize the concept of race performativity intersected by gender and sexuality and to analyze this in the interaction of black women in an online conversation circle. To reach this goal, I analyze an online conversation circle with me and six other black women through Messenger and I base my analysis on the concept of performativity from Austinian and Butlerian studies, and on the concepts of race articulated with other discursive-bodily markers indicated by hooks (1995), Bento (2002), Mbembe (2014, 2018), Pacheco (2013), among others. In the analysis of the conversation circle, I used the linguistic indexes suggested by Silverstein (2003). The analysis shows the participants intersecting racial performativity with gender and sexuality in the process of understanding the peculiarities of their own existences in different contexts and moments of their lives.

Keywords

• Performativity
• Race
• Gender
• Sexuality
• Black women