DanceSport's Economy of Desire

Meneau argues that the DanceSport dispositive constrains what Latin dance can look like, despite resistance and counter-movements, by excluding or invisibilising queerness and objectifying and sexualising female dancers. This shows in all elements that affect or constitute dancers' performances on the (competition) dance floor; that includes registration, clothing, coupling, partnering, moving, judging.

This book helps readers understand how the heteronormative gender binary works, how it plays out in all the elements that influence or make up dance, and how it manages to remain hegemonic. It demonstrates how the DanceSport dispositive affects and influences all its actors, all the time – how we think, decide, move, perceive others, or incorporate knowledge that shapes our bodies according to norms and productive power. Finally, by looking for the heteronormative gender binary in the dance and in the regulations, DanceSport's Economy of Desireunravels the underlying mechanisms that secure the oppressive systems and allows society at large to better understand them.