Illuminating everyday performances of privilege and oppression

ABSTRACT

Courses: Intercultural Communication, Interracial Communication, Gender and Communication, Introduction to Communication Course (within a unit on culture), and any courses encouraging critical analyses of power.

Objectives: This activity will: illuminate the ways in which everyday performances of privilege and resulting oppressions connect with symbolic, individual, and institutional ideologies and actions; identify the ways in which individuals who are marginalized and oppressed may internalize and/or resist dominant ideologies and actions through such performances of privilege; recognize how individual biographies play into our everyday communication and performances with/of power; encourage intersectional analyses of identity, context, and performances of/with power; and develop communication tools for disrupting and speaking back to oppressive performances of privilege.

Notes

1 I typically choose texts or readings that provide collective and varied experiences of several groups. In the intercultural communication course this may be Martin and Nakayama’s (2013) Intercultural Communication in Contexts chapter on cultural histories. Whereas in a gender and communication course, I have used Wood and Fixmer-Oraiz (2016) Gendered Lives chapters on women’s and men’s social movements. Each of these texts provides intersectional and historical accounts of lived experiences.

2 See also Warren and Heuman’s (2007) Performing Parody essay.