Racing (for) Social Justice: Performing Apologia and Accountability in Dialogues About Race

Authors

  • Ellen Correa University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  • Liliana Herakova Western New England University
  • Dijana Jelača St. John's University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-15.3.2159

Keywords:

discourse, apologia, accountability, race, dialogue, performance, ethnography

Abstract

This performance fuses ethnographic data from dialogues about race with the authors' reflections on their experiences as facilitators for these dialogues. The dialogue project was conceived as an activist move in a context in which race is rarely talked about. In this performance we consider how each of us heard and perhaps articulated both a discourse of apologia (the language of self-defense) and a discourse of accountability for racial privilege. We perform and re-member moments from the actual dialogues and our experiences facilitating them—what we heard, what we said, and what we thought—as they may work toward and against activism for equality.

URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1403120

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Author Biographies

Ellen Correa, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Ellen CORREA is a doctoral candidate in the Communication Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research focuses on examining the ethical and relational implications of the discourse of cultural assimilation. As a third generation Puerto Rican, her dissertation will use dialogue and performance ethnography to explore her own family’s experience of cultural assimilation.

Liliana Herakova, Western New England University

Lily HERAKOVA holds a PhD in Communication from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her work explores and performs the dialogic construction of knowledge, care, and identities in communication, particularly in health care and interpersonal contexts. Lily has presented at numerous interdisciplinary conferences and has published in various journals, including Journal of Applied Communication, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, and Communication Studies.

Dijana Jelača, St. John's University

Dijana JELACA holds a PhD in Communication from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her areas of specialization include critical cultural studies, cinema studies, critical ethnic studies and transnational feminist theories. Dijana's research interests center on the questions of how cultural production constitutes, limits and frames the uses of collective trauma in the aftermath of catastrophe, particularly wars. Her work has appeared in Camera Obscura, Communication Studies, Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies, and elsewhere.

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Published

2014-09-04

How to Cite

Correa, E., Herakova, L., & Jelača, D. (2014). Racing (for) Social Justice: Performing Apologia and Accountability in Dialogues About Race. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 15(3). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-15.3.2159

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 3 (2014): The Slow University

Section

Single Contributions

License

Copyright (c) 2014 Ellen Correa, Liliana Herakova, Dijana Jelača

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.