Questioning the white body: on applying a phenomenological mode of inquiry to whiteness studies in education

Abstract

The racialized body is of obvious, or at least implicit, concern for the qualitative study of Whiteness in education. Whiteness, as an organizing principle that conditions normative ways of being in society, is predicated upon the raced body as a social signifier. It is curious then, that the body remains under-examined and not treated as a serious analytic. How bodies interact in real time—how educational spaces are brought to life—are left to the analytical wayside in favor of reflective approaches. This paper questions prominent approaches to studying Whiteness in education, and subsequently proposes expanding the methodological repertoire to encompass a phenomenology of racial embodiment as a way to make-meaning of the subtle interactions between bodies unfolding in unique educational places.