NWSA 2026
National Women's Studies Association Annual Conference, Atlanta, Georgia
Paper Presentation
Rhinestones and Resistance: Burlesque, Infrapolitics, and the Labor of Survival in the U.S. and France
Friday, November 6, 2:30 to 3:45 pm
Room 311, Hilton Atlanta
(Part of Pleasure, Precarity and Possibilities in Performance)
Pound It Out: Interactive Percussive Movement Workshop
A movement-based workshop using tap and percussive dance to explore release and resistance through the body. Rhythm and weight become tools for letting go of what we carry and pushing back against what constrains us. No dance experience required. Wear comfortable clothing and come ready to move.
Saturday, November 7, 2:30 to 3:45 pm
Room 306, 3rd Floor, Hilton Atlanta
Paper Presentation
Rhinestones and Resistance: Burlesque, Infrapolitics, and the Labor of Survival in the U.S. and France
Abstract
Designed after Dobbs to examine reproductive justice activism, the study shifted when interviews centered racial exclusion, precarity, and community conflict. Neo-burlesque is often framed as feminist empowerment. This study asks a different question: how do performers sustain resistance in environments that penalize it? It draws on eleven interviews with performers and producers (eight in the United States, three in France), observation at eleven venues, and reflexive analysis of the researcher's position as a community member. Analysis identifies four forms of resistance: explicit, embodied, relational, and infrapolitical. Using James C. Scott's infrapolitics and feminist care ethics, the study proposes the constrained ecosystem, a cultural space in which resistance is possible but limited by economic precarity, gatekeeping, community policing, and social risk. Performers in both countries calibrate how, whether, and at what cost to resist, but the pressures differ: political polarization and rights retrenchment in the United States, racial exclusion beneath republican universalism in France. The study argues that attrition, not censorship, is the greatest threat to burlesque resistance, and that performers sustain resistance through collective labor and care that costs them. The constrained ecosystem shifts the analytical question from whether an action is resistant to what conditions make resistance possible.
This abstract reflects the current version of the study.
Keywords: burlesque, creative labor, France, infrapolitics, neo-burlesque, performance studies, resistance, United States