Exotica: The Deployment of Intersecting Binaries

Binaries simplistically reduce complex relationships to two juxtaposed categories. Although binaries are myth rather than reality, they pit people against each other in everyday life. Many articles theorize the importance of binaries, but few provide empirical evidence of their impact. This paper an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of contemporary ethnography 2012-02, Vol.41 (1), p.7-33
Main Author: Myers, Kristen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Binaries
Class
Discourse
Everyday Life
Exoticism
Gender
Heterosexuality
Interracial relationships
Myths
Otherness
Race
Racial Differences
Sex
Sexuality
Social relations
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Summary:Binaries simplistically reduce complex relationships to two juxtaposed categories. Although binaries are myth rather than reality, they pit people against each other in everyday life. Many articles theorize the importance of binaries, but few provide empirical evidence of their impact. This paper analyzes more than six hundred incidents of racetalk from more than three hundred subjects to explore the ways that people construct and deploy the intersecting binaries of sexuality, gender, class, and race. Through a form of racetalk that I call “exotica,” subjects perpetuated false divisions across raced, classed, and gendered lines. Exotica operated as a controlling discourse, simultaneously eroticizing racial difference and proscribing heterosexual coupling with racial “others.”
ISSN:0891-2416
1552-5414
DOI:10.1177/0891241611431701