Claims to Space: Exploring the Value and Formation of racial creatives' funds of knowledge in LA

Keywords: Education; Race; Funds of Knowledge; Community Based Research
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 78

Abstract

Dominant racial narratives in academic and public discourses have largely celebrated an identity-based aesthetic logic that disguises itself behind representational efforts to advance neoliberal desires. In turn, a commodification of racial geographies is uncovered, while neoliberal subjects grow further oblivious to their involvement. Perhaps nowhere is this process more evident than in Los Angeles' diverse streetwear community, where a predatory, essentialist relation to place pursues profit in favor of active cultural productions of place.

At the same time, the function of streetwear as a dominant catalyst towards racialized people is telling of a pedagogical encounter that carries the potential to analyze the conflicting forces that all take place within urbanized Los Angeles. These creative deployments of space, then, take on a critical spirit akin to organic research methods that uncover rich funds of knowledge. This study engages racialized creatives to critically reflect on their contributions to place and collective knowledge systems within the bustling cultural site that is Los Angeles. I draw on photoethnography and semistructured interviews to further nuance the creatives that make claim to space through their cultural productions. By exploring the potentiality that these racialized aesthetics have as tools for translation across intellectual spaces, I consider the significance assigned by racial creatives to place and its associated value beyond capital.