An Epistemic Approach to Hair as an Intersectional Element of Significance

Abstract

In this text, halfway between the theoretical and the readings from the lens of popular ethnography (film, social movements, poetry, literature, and commercials), we traverse three stations: hair as a countercultural history of Black women, where an obvious juxtaposition exists between norms, institutions, and modes of presentation; as a linguistics, where we observe hair as a hermeneutic, where everything is pure metaphor and mimesis; and lastly, as performative, where a struggle is established involving truth, spaces, and not only what can be said but also shown and touched, through new languages and identities of power via hair. Yet, the text carries another layer, less obvious: the play with the ideas of how we deal with modernity-coloniality, which tells us what is worth investigating, thinking about, and publicizing. We could do nothing if we do not understand that the machinery of racism, discrimination, homophobia, poverty, and belief in white supremacy involve as many elements as there are hairs on our heads. We shout that from another academy, everything is possible: championed by ALMARGEN, a research group that delves into the symbiosis of understanding and analyzing hair beyond a mere aesthetic requirement that sets trends or influences. Attracting hegemonic nuances that compel us to delve deeper into the positions of individuals socially, politically, and epistemologically in diverse contexts that make us either choose or are compelled to position ourselves in order to perpetuate imposed standards about how we should appear and perceive our hair. Drawing upon an "on the margin" structure of the structural, which we elucidate in the present work.