Embodied Horizons: Queer Feminist Ethnography and the Researcher’s Body as a Site of Knowledge and Resistance

Abstract (English)

This roundtable, “Embodied Horizons: Queer Feminist Ethnography and the Researcher’s Body as a Site of Knowledge and Resistance,” interrogates the transformative potential of centering trans-queer feminist frameworks in ethnographic practice. Challenging anthropology’s colonial and patriarchal legacies, we ask: How can researchers reconfigure fieldwork as an embodied, relational, and politically engaged process that refuses extractive, hierarchical models of knowledge production? By positioning the researcher’s body—marked by gender, race, caste, class, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, disability, and desire—as both a tool and a text, we explore how corporeal presence disrupts binaries of observer/observed, objectivity/subjectivity, and insider/outsider.

Drawing on intersectional, decolonial, subaltern and affect theories, participants will share critical reflections on fieldwork encounters where their bodies became sites of vulnerability, solidarity, and resistance. Themes include the ethics of desire and intimacy in ethnographic relationships, the role of sensory and affective experiences in data collection, and the possibilities of “flesh-as-method” to amplify marginalized narratives. We interrogate how queer feminist praxis can destabilize colonial and capitalist structures embedded in traditional fieldwork, emphasizing relational accountability over extraction. For instance, how might embodied ethnography reframe notions of “the field” itself—as a space of diasporic longing, transfeminist worldmaking, or erotic solidarity?

The roundtable’s interactive format blends brief provocations from scholars working at the intersections of Transnational & global feminism, queer migration, subalternism and transfeminist anthropology with collaborative dialogue. Attendees will engage in small-group discussions on prompts such as: How has your body shaped your research? When does embodiment become a site of risk or liberation? Together, we will synthesize insights to co-create a living manifesto of principles for transformative ethnography—one that prioritizes care, reciprocity, and anti-oppressive methodologies.

This discussion responds urgently to anthropology’s ongoing reckoning with its colonial roots and the demand for ethical, inclusive research. By centering queer feminist epistemologies, we argue that the researcher’s body is not a contaminant to neutrality but a vital instrument for witnessing, resisting, and reimagining power. Outcomes include a digital archive of reflections, a network for scholars committed to embodied methodologies, and a reimagined toolkit that embraces vulnerability and desire as strengths rather than liabilities.

Ultimately, this roundtable invites anthropologists to queer the boundaries of ethnography, not merely as theory but as lived practice. It calls for a discipline where the messiness of embodied presence—the labor of care, the politics of desire, the weight of trauma—becomes foundational to producing knowledge that is both rigorous and radically humane.