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Emergent Dancefloors: Berlin Memories and Worldmaking Through a Crisis of Care, Dissertation Abstract by Jordan Brown

Places where people dance are in the process of coming into aliveness: This dissertation recollects the collective memories of individuals who are members of the nightlife ecosystem. This dissertation is particularly interested in how the practices of nightlife gig-workers lead to a sociopolitical transformation of the material world (1), more specifically, the world of nightlife or the dancefloor.

This research explores vulnerability as a black feminist methodology. It examines the grief of living through and refusing the contemporary political moment: a period of time in which the dominating oppressive culture of the white, cis-hetero, patriarchal, capitalistic world (or simply, the white imagination) (2) perpetuates, facilitates, and normalizes neglect, abuse, harm, and other forms of interpersonal and institutional violence.

This moment is felt globally and thus exists in the research location: Berlin, Germany. Germany imagines itself as a white nation; subsequently marginalizing all non-white citizens and migrants alike. The role of memory and vulnerability in this ethnographic research provides a succulent texture and context for those living against this political moment.

What does it mean to be an emergent (3) dancefloor? How do we live, play, and care for ourselves and one another in the face of violence? An emergent dancefloor may look like the connections and small practices used by nightlife gig-workers who strive to conjure dancefloors with a pulse; countering both the popular narrative that dancefloors are dead, and the reality of living with an oppressive culture that operates through violent means. How/do the liberatory practices of harm reduction and awareness create atmospheres of care and play for all who enter the dancefloor?

FOOTNOTES:

  1. Dorinne K. Kondo, Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018).

  2. white imagination: Where the idea for the normalization of the need and persistent use of violent systems originates. For example, the idea that black lesbians are hyper-sexual comes from “some white imagination” Not reality, where the cultural reinforcing of said imagined idea creates a stereotype that results into real harm for the affected group. A. M. brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, 2017, 18.

  3. Emergent (adj.): in the process of coming into being (being meaning aliveness) or becoming prominent Also see: Emergent Strategy,“Emergence notices the way small actions and connections create complex systems, patterns that become ecosystems and societies. Emergence is our inheritance as a part of this universe; it is how we change. Emergent Strategy is how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for” AND “Emergence emphasizes critical connections over critical mass” brown, Emergent Strategy, 3.