Exotica

Abstract

Binaries simplistically reduce complex relationships to two juxtaposed categories. Although binaries are myth rather than reality, they pit people against each other in everyday life. Many articles theorize the importance of binaries, but few provide empirical evidence of their impact. This paper analyzes more than six hundred incidents of racetalk from more than three hundred subjects to explore the ways that people construct and deploy the intersecting binaries of sexuality, gender, class, and race. Through a form of racetalk that I call “exotica,” subjects perpetuated false divisions across raced, classed, and gendered lines. Exotica operated as a controlling discourse, simultaneously eroticizing racial difference and proscribing heterosexual coupling with racial “others.”