[Un]Comfortable in My Own Skin

Articulation, Reflexivity, and the Duality of Self

Bibliographic Data

ID2408473
AuthorsJoshua I Newman (0000-0001-9033-2081)
Year2011
Volume11
Issue6
Pages545-557
Publication date2011-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCulture Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1532-7086 • E-ISSN: 1552-356X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1532708611426110
OpenAlexW2152317417
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited42

This article offers a reflexive [re]discovery of my own Whiteness, my own Southern-ness, and my own masculinity through ethnographic engagement with the 'New Sporting South'; reporting on the juxtaposition of my new [critical performance scholar] self onto the spaces and social relations once inhabited by my old [working class, parochial, 'Southern'] self. Although this article is primarily a retrospective on my return to Southern sporting fields in Mississippi, Tennessee, and North Carolina, it is also a critical inspection of the performative politics of engaged cultural studies research on the body. For mine is a political project, bent on contextualizing, and thus problematizing, the seemingly banal nature of Southern sporting fixtures such as college football and stock car racing. The more time I spent in these spaces of the New Sporting South, 'observing' the sport cultures from which I sprung, the better I was able to trace a series of ostensibly inescapable patterns of oppression: (a) the cultures of racism, sexism, and patriarchy are still highly active within these local sporting spectacles; (b) my White skin, Southern drawl, 'hillbilly' vernacular, and masculine deportment allowed access to the most exclusive/divisive of these social spaces (whereas others might have been denied); (c) to prolong engagement with various groups, I was forced to 'perform' my 'old' Southern self (laughing at racist jokes, admiring Confederate-flag emblazoned garb, and so on); and (d) in an effort to create change (through critical interrogation of the sporting empirical), I was most often 'read' as a [re]productive agent of these regressive cultural politics. To this end, I argue that any politically-'progressive' outcomes from this type of qualitative research must be weighed against the symbolic violence created therein

Aesthetics · Art · Ethnography · Football · Literature · Masculinity · Media studies · Oppression · Patriarchy · Performative utterance · Political science · Politics · Racialization · Racism · Reflexivity · Sociology · Vernacular · White (mutation · Anthropology · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society · Gender Studies · Law

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