White middle-class men in Rio de Janeiro. The making of a dominant subject

Based on the biographical accounts of upper-middle-class white men living in wealthy parts of Rio di Janeiro, Valeria Ribeiro Corossacz analyzes specific experiences of whiteness as they are produced at the intersection of multiple categories, in particular gender, class, and sexuality. White middle class men in Rio de Janeiro investigates what it means to be classified as a white person and a man in a society known for its valorization of racial mixing and yet deeply structured by racism, class and gender inequalities. Ribeiro Corossacz focuses on certain experiences in the men’s biographical trajectories representing moments of apprenticeship in a specific model of white, heterosexual and heteronormative middle-class masculinity and describes how these experiences are constructed as normative. This book explores how class, gender and race privilege are mutually produced and perceived by these men as “normal”. Examining instances of silence and what is left unsaid but also these men’s ability to provide precise descriptions of power relations and violent episodes, the author encourages us to observe the condition of dominant subjects as a keystone of the reproduction social discrimination.