Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

In this conceptual piece, I use a framework of embodiment to argue for approaches to inquiry that are better suited to engage and amplify Black womxn's knowledges in social work than are more popular social sciences methods. I also relate embodiment to several epistemic frames, and warn against disembodiment through more popular methods. Finally, I present three embodied research approaches that align with feminist social work principles. Throughout the piece, I reference works that explore feminist and embodied practices while centering Black womxn. I also frame discussion through my own embodiment as a Black femme scholar and practitioner, and embodiment and its potential in inquiries through a Black feminist tradition. Embodiment has been a framework of feminist scholarship for decades, broadly defined as living out knowledge through the body and/or in its environments through a process of becoming. Scholars in this school of thought account for their and participants’ emotions and dispositions as part of how knowledge is lived, while treating the body as a text to be read.

Keywords

Black feminist theory/womanism epistemology participatory methods poststructuralism theory postcolonial theory

Introduction

Knowledge is information that helps us to understand existence, and meaningful inquiry is storytelling that aids in knowledge construction. For as long as I can remember, I have been a scholar – irritating my family with questions of, “why” and “how” in response to assumed truths, and critically analyzing everything. As a professor, I join my mother (who is a p-12 educator) in constructing knowledge through pedagogy; we, along with our siblings, also do so through visual and performing arts. Our Elders and Ancestors did so through oral histories, memorized recipes, church hymns, and farming; they shared this knowledge with us whenever we spent time with them in the bayous, wherein their parents were enslaved. These experiences were means through which we came to understand interplays of ourselves, each other, and our surroundings. Western academe calls these repertoires “cultural,” “familial,” and “community-based” knowledge. To us, they were simply “life”; they were and are embodiment. In this paper, I use a framework of embodiment to argue for approaches to inquiry that are better suited to engage and amplify Black womxn's knowledges in social work than are more popular social sciences methods. In doing so, I reference principles and practices of feminist and embodied social work. The values of feminist social work align with embodiment, which has been a topic of feminist scholarship for decades.

Embodiment is broadly conceptualized as living out knowledge through performances of the body and/or in its environments (e.g., Adams & Jones, 2014; Hopkins, 2012; Tangenberg & Kemp, 2002). Scholars of embodiment account for their and research participants’ emotions and dispositions as part of how knowledge is lived (e.g., Dewsbury, 2018; Hordge-Freeman, 2018; Nairn et al., 2005). As such, they encourage integration of self, nature, spirit,¹ and ancestry to construct knowledge as holistically as possible. Examining historical trauma in peoples who are Indigenous to Turtle Island, Walters et al. (2011) characterized embodiment as exploration of the physical body as a site of hidden, forbidden, forgotten, and unconscious knowledges. Nairn et al. (2005) define it similarly, and consider the body of a text to be read as (part of) inquiry.

In teaching, I highlight that feminist social work prioritizes personal growth, transparency, emotional knowledge, and egalitarian relationships and decision-making between clients and practitioners. These values underpin interventions to support clients’ empowerment in constructing their own realities (Black, 2003; Lazzari et al., 2009; Nes & Iadicola, 1989). Feminist social work also prioritizes de-pathologizing clients’ issues through assessment and education about those issues, as bound to broader social inequities (Black, 2003; Nes & Iadicola, 1989; Remer, 2012). This consciousness-raising helps clients identify connections between their issues and power structures, and those connections’ influences on their lives (Black, 2003). Theories of change that are specific to racialized womxn assert that life challenges stem from racism in society that underwrites their social and mental health concerns – such that eliminating it and other oppressions, while uplifting cultural diversity in practice, will improve all womxn's outcomes (Remer, 2012).

When working in racialized communities, anti-oppression theories of change arguably cannot be optimized without embodiment. Tangenberg and Kemp (2002) call attention to manners in which traditional academia and social work practice have treated the body as an entity to conquer and control in favor (and as a triumph) of the mind – rather than as a source of several forms of knowledge that work in tandem with the mind. They – along with van Rhyn et al. (2021), Wong and Vinsky (2021), and others – also recognize the importance of bodies as the material vehicles through which practitioners and clients interact, such that effective practices of feminist social work principles conceptually require all parties involved to be embodied.

Embodied Research: Possible Constructs

As a Black womxn who grew up in multicultural environments, my framing of embodied scholarship descends from Afrocentric works by James (2017), Myers (1988) and her associates (1991), and Dillard (2000, 2006, 2014). Their discussions of embodiment hinge on the premise that people come into existence as whole beings who are tied to all else that exists through spirit, such that spiritual and physical matters are unified (Myers, 1988; Myers et al., 1991). Their claims are in discussion with ideas of embodiment from other femme scholars of Color: for example, James (2017) borrows Nishanaabeg wisdom from Simpson (2011) to claim it as integral to the knowledge construction for Black womxn in what is now commonly called “the Americas” –

… in order to access knowledge … we have to engage our entire bodies: our physical beings, emotional self, our spiritual energy and our intellect. Our methodologies, our lifeways must reflect those components of our being and the integration of those four components into a whole. This gives rise to our “research methodologies,” our ways of knowing, our processes for living in the real world. (p. 42)

Because embodiment is context-specific with infinite possible manifestations, ontological and axiological² constructs that inform it also are. My framing of constructs is rooted in my (a) previous scholarship (e.g., alexander, 2020)and (b) embodiment as a Black womxn with contemporary roots in rural Turtle Island.³ However, it is important to emphasize that the constructs themselves are neither new nor exclusive to Black womxn. My scholarly Elders – including Dillard, James, Myers, and Collins (1986, 2000, 2015) – have previously explored them as part of Black womxn's epistemic practices. Many ideas about these constructs are also shared among racialized communities (e.g., Simpson). Thence: I am exploring Black womxn's embodiments with an understanding that they are in conversation with other communities’ embodiments. I present these constructs as distinct from each other, but they certainly interact in practice.

Construct One: Ancestral Spirituality

James (2017) asserts that African Diasporic communities have maintained embodied customs – through relationships with Land, Ancestors, and Orisha (alexander, 2020) – as ways to retrieve knowledge through Sacred relationships for scholarship and praxis. She defines “Sacred” as welcoming Ancestors into a space (2017); Okpalaoka and Dillard (2012) define it as honoring and embracing work that is carried out with reverence. In the west, Sacred knowledge has been embodied through providing sanctuary and nourishment for members of the Black Diaspora, and in preserving language, music, dance, rituals, and plant and spoken medicine (James, 2017; O’Brien, 1978; Takagi, 1999; Wade, 1964). Dillard et al. (2000) speak of Diasporic spiritual knowledge being shared through scholarship and pedagogy as poems, stories, songs, dialogue, etc. James asserts these practices as being rooted in Yoruba Orisha Traditions (YOT; 2017) a femme-led Pan-African spiritual system that formed in the west – founded on traditions from the Yoruba, Ewe, Fon, Kikôngo, and Dahomean tribes that survived the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (alexander, 2020).

YOT is a perfect example of what Henry (2006) calls “Middle passage epistemology.” Citing Gundaker (1998) and Diedrich et al. (1999), Henry names this frame as giving Blacks in the west a “double vision” or “ability to see across cultural and physical boundaries” (Gundaker, 1998). Henry also claims this ability as coming from our inability to completely remove our knowledge from spatial and historical locations of Africa – causing us to live in a liminal space wherein we try to rediscover Ancestral ways in contemporary contexts (Diedrich et al., 1999; Henry, 2006). Dillard (2014) claims that, “[s]pirituality, in African-centered thought is the very essence of African people, regardless of where we are in the world” (p. 278). Myers et al. (1991) refer to all persons as their most actualized or “optimal” when their physical and spiritual selves are unified.

Construct Two: Lived Experience

Endarkened Feminist Epistemology (EFE; Dillard, 2006) asserts that the definition of “knowledge” for/by/about/with Black womxn should arise from our communities wherein scholarship takes place (alexander, 2020). Like James and Myers and her associates, it accounts for our specific cultural contexts and lived experiences as grounding epistemic practices. It also aligns with the work of Collins by recognizing that (a) Black womxn produce knowledge within contexts of power structures, and (b) sociohistorical oppressions inform frames and methods through which we do so. Additionally, Collins’ Black Feminist Standpoint Theory (BFST; 1997, 2000) positions poor Black womxn as experts on society, their own lives, and the lives of other groups with relatively more social power (alexander, 2022a). BFST is a retort to Feminist Standpoint Epistemology (FSE; Harding, 1986, 1992) that also complicates Hegel's master/slave dialectic by addressing intersectionalities (Collins, 1997; Crenshaw, 1989, 1991) of racism, sexism, and classism as informing epistemic practice. Focusing on class struggle, “Hegel held that the slave's knowledge of reality is more advanced than that of the master's because they must understand both the master's world and their own to survive” (alexander, 2022a, p. 735).

Construct Three: Community

Dillard (2014) identifies research as both an intellectual and spiritual pursuit of historical and communal purpose. She also asserts that practices of scholarship are intrinsic in the African Diaspora, as we try to connect unfamiliar (read: non-African) languages, traditions, and cultural knowledges to our Ancestral homes to actualize our own communal ideologies. James (2017) presumes historical and contemporary epistemic practices as communal. To this point: she contextualizes YOT as part of her work with Trade/itions, a 2016 symposium hosted at City University of New York that centered activism, cultural arts, and Orisha/Orisa/Orixa/Oricha traditions in the west (alexander, 2020). Myers (1988) and her associates (1991) suggest that spiritual connection with others is requisite for anyone to become optimally. Dillard (2014) presents five guiding principles for research methodologies that are based on EFE, all of which make community both requisite for and benefactors of Black womxn's epistemic practices.

Love: an intention and act of will in extending oneself to nurture one's own or another's growth, (Peck, 1978) – which creates more reciprocity in scholarship (hooks, 2000).

Compassion: the intention and capacity to relieve suffering through research – as a form of struggle against oppression (Ani, 1994).

Reciprocity: the intention and capacity to see all humans as equal – removing all prejudice, discrimination, and boundaries between researchers and study participants.

Ritual: the intention and capacity to transcend boundaries of time and space, and the practice of unifying that which is human with that which is Divine.

Gratitude: the need to be thankful for research as both spiritual methodology, and a healing process for ourselves and others.

Embodying the Constructs as Inquiry

My experiences in scholarship about, teaching of, and service and practice with Black womxn and girls have led me to believe that our knowledges are inherently embodied. Black womxn speak about knowledge in terms of what we learn through trial and error, what we hear from friends and see in our families, stories about our Ancestors, our familiarity with certain places and the conditions there, and how situations intuitively make us feel. Importantly, embodiment allows us to make sense of, navigate, survive, and thrive in many settings and situations – for ourselves, and for and with others. W.E.B. Du Bois (1903) called this epistemic state a “second sight” that members of the Black Diaspora have developed in response to being oppressed through westernization (as cited in Henry, 2006). The potential of embodiment makes it an essential framework in inquiries for/by/about/with Black womxn if we are to be full participants in them, because each Black womxn is uniquely embodied. Embodiment's premise also aligns with values of feminist social work; thence, scholars should feel encouraged to expand its use in service to making inquiry more liberatory. I offer examples of embodied projects later in this piece to support scholars’ exploration of the frame; however, it is important to first understand how it is related to social science's more conventional ones.

Bridging Embodiment and Other Epistemologies

Although embodied knowledges have been (re)constituted in non-western communities throughout time and irrespective of western knowledge movements (e.g., the Enlightenment; alexander & Pasque, 2022), they are most analogous to “post” frames – including -modern, -structural, and -colonial – in western research discourse. “Post” scholars (e.g., Childers, 2013; Voithofer, 2013) argue that these frames acknowledge sociohistorical positions and power structures that impact one's epistemic processes (e.g., the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade), while honoring that people still exercise agency in negotiating how they become themselves through constantly doing their knowledge amid said positions and structures. In this way, “post” frames share embodiment's axiology of being subjective, fluid, contextual, and lived. Here, I discuss three frames that might bridge embodiment and conventional social science inquiry approaches.

Embodiment ↔ Postmodernism

Postmodern epistemology holds that knowledge is subjective, and that there is no, “one true story” about reality to be discovered through inquiry (Zalewski, 2011). This supports the notion of embodiment that allows for infinite manifestations of truth. Hesse-Biber (2014) asserts that postmodern and feminist epistemologies converge on a shared aim of empowering oppressed groups by bringing them into scholarly consciousness and asking new questions by centering subjugated knowledge (Gannon & Davies, 2012). While the language of “new” discounts long existences of scholarly consciousness beyond academia, “subjugated” aligns with critical frameworks like feminist critiques by recognizing that knowledge is constructed in and by social groups against whom power is systematically exercised. Karl Marx argued that all knowledge is constructed subjectively, and that society's power elites construct it to justify social inequities that they create (as cited in Harding, 1986). Black womxn's embodiments challenge this misuse of elite power, by enabling us to exercise our own through doing knowledge however we see fit.

Embodiment ↔ Poststructuralism

Poststructural epistemologies account for people/their bodies as sites of both knowledge production (Haraway, 1991) and exercises of power. They also present concepts of people continuously becoming through performing or doing who and what they are (e.g., Butler, 1990) as living methodologies that interact with their histories, experiences, and ways of knowing (Childers, 2013; Voithofer, 2013). Pelias (2012) claims that the body is political and methodological because its performances – informed by fluid locations and cultures – continuously and simultaneously reify, undermine, and create new knowledge. Somerville (2004) makes similar arguments while considering the body's liminality among theories of knowledge production. These ideas align with embodiment, because they treat a person as a living theory – based on the person's cultures, contexts, experiences, environments, etc.

Heron and Reason (1997) name poststructural epistemic practices that expand beyond intellectual abstraction as “extended epistemology,” which aligns with embodiment through doing knowledge. They present four forms of knowledge creation: (a) experiential: encounters with others, the world, and contexts in which a person lives; (b) presentational: a means to (re)present experiential knowledge through arts, storytelling, images, movement and dance, etc.; (c) propositional: knowledge that is grounded in exploration; and (d) positional: a skill or ability, based on all other forms of knowledge, manifest as action (Seeley, 2014). These epistemic forms are cyclically generative: a person creates new knowledge by living out their existing knowledge.

Embodiment ↔ Postcolonialism

Postcolonialism positions non-westerners as experts on western violence, as targets of it. This positioning supports deconstructing western perspectives of the world as its “mainstream” epistemic regime (Christophers, 2007; Iwowo, 2014) – and thus challenges westerners’ rendering nonwestern knowledge as “new,” inferior, or nonexistent. Postcolonialism examines epistemic practices in ways that are consistent with other post-critical frames, but for the purpose of challenging abuses of power in a modern world that assumes everyone to have the same (read: western) knowledge practices and priorities. One of its central tenets is colonial subjection: westerners treating non-westerners as subjects/objects (or the “subaltern”) of their imaginations – about whom they have authority to create knowledge (Bhabha, 1994; Said, 1978; Spivak, 1987, 1988) and make decisions. Postcolonialism's purpose makes it adaptable with (and possibly a practice of) embodiment: non-westerners construct knowledge through geographic, cultural, and sociohistorical contexts of colonial violence. Nandy (1983) encourages non-westerners to resist said violence by continuing to live out their cultural traditions, despite navigating impacts of westernization in their daily lives (Prasad, 2003). That recommended practice is adaptable to embodiment, and it highlights the need for theories of change that center Black womxn.

Bridging Epistemologies Through Embodied Practices

These epistemic frames center history, lived experience, social positionings, and interactions with environments as cruxes for how to do knowledge – as does embodiment. They also jointly assert that no “universal knowledge” exists about any topic: all knowledge is fluid, subjective, contextual, and reflective of power structures in which it exists. This characterization of knowledge is common among scholars who do culturally-responsive research. In a recent volume on this very topic (alexander & Pasque, 2022), my colleague and I identify several practices among said scholars that align with these frames and embodiment. They are: (a) doing inquiry in service to advancing inquiries’ approaches, as a longer-term “meta” project; (b) designing projects to be individualized for a particular community; (c) engaging liminalities of researchers in their projects, which may include being members of an inquiry's group/community of focus; and (d) explicitly politicizing inquiry as an intentional practice of anti-oppression. Where these practices are missing from inquiries for/by/about/with Black womxn, scholars risk harming us through disembodiment.

The Violence of Disembodied Research

Disembodiment is, “the process by which people become fragmented into …. ‘parts’ of themselves—such that they cannot define or produce contextual knowledge as whole beings” (alexander, 2020, p. 79). In social sciences research, these “parts” are typically aspects of a person that are studied in isolation from their entire being (e.g., their racial identity or cognitive development). Because the academy is both a western product and western epistemic site (alexander & Pasque, 2022), it privileges decontextualized and depersonalized knowledge to create foundations for “objective” scholarship that is “generalizable” across populations. These foundations encourage disembodiment by breaking people down into “parts” of themselves – like vehicles in a chop shop – for examinations that are removed from their unique and whole subjectivities. Said differently: these “objective” research approaches disregard the full existence of unique characteristics that, together, constitute who and what individuals are. Because people are constituted holistically and contextually, studying their “parts” for generalization will only yield suboptimal (Myers, 1988) understandings of both people and the “part” of them being studied – while harming them through dehumanization in the process. Such epistemic violence (Spivak, 1988) is even more harmful to Black womxn, who already suffer intersectionalities of racism, sexism, and other oppressions while navigating the social work apparatus – as researchers, instructors, study participants, clients, practitioners, community partners, students, etc.

To this point: scholars of embodied inquiry have chided more traditional methodologies for disembodying all parties in studies – and studies themselves – such that they lose any practical grounding (where “practical” denotes materialized practice; e.g., James, 2017; Manzi et al., 2019; Mirón, 2014). Mignolo (as cited in James, 2017) refers to positivist attempts at producing generalizable truths through depersonalized examinations as being based on a “zero point epistemology” (p. 2): knowledge with no contextual grounding, and thus no real material meaning. In an exchange about their epistemic processes in academe, Dillard et al. (2000) lamented that western research often renders cultural knowledges invisible through (a) requiring compartmentalization for analyses, (b) expecting scholars to be invulnerable and all-knowing experts, and (c) removing purposes of research from spiritual framings that hold cultural significance in communities of inquiry. Black womxn's knowledges have longstanding grounding in constructs of embodiment, and will continue to do so despite academe's privileging of “objective” and “scientific” practices. Thence, fields such as social work must expand their repertoires to engage our expertise in service to advancing inquiry that truly includes us.

Embodied Methodologies: Exemplars

In support of that expansion, I share three embodied approaches to inquiry – a/r/tography, critical geography, and project relationships – and examples for each that center Black womxn. Other approaches exist in and beyond academe; these are accessible through academic literature, which may be useful for scholars who currently must adhere to traditional citation practices.

A/r/tography

A/r/tography is an interdisciplinary, nonlinear, and collectivistic approach wherein participants are simultaneously a rtists, r esearchers, and t eachers. A/r/tographers aim to engage knowing, doing, and making by interpreting and representing knowledge through creative praxes (e.g., dancing, photography, poetry, etc.; Irwin, 2012; Irwin & de Cosson, 2004). Key to a/r/tography is that theory and practice are unified as living inquiries, which are predicated on the fact that lives are constantly changing. For that reason, people make meaning of themselves in their day-to-day between being with themselves and being with other people (Merleau-Ponty, 1968; Nancy, 2000) – where their “self” is the site of epistemic practice. A/r/tography is participatory action research (e.g., photovoice, Wang & Burris, 1997; Wilson & Flicker, 2014). As such, creative texts (e.g., poems, exhibits) are interpretations of knowledge that performers might share to prompt relationships of inquiry (e.g., learning communities or art collectives). Living inquiry is embodied such that art arises from and informs everyday life – thus knowing, doing, and making are simultaneously emotional, spiritual, intuitive, and cognitive (Irwin, 2012).

Literature about Black womxn's a/r/tography emphasizes healing from harms that are Ancestral, contemporary, tangible, intangible, public, and private. As a scholar of the 1950s–1970s Black Arts Movement (BAM), McMillon (2018) expands on Henry's “Middle passage epistemology” and Du Bois’ “second sight” to name us as having, “spirit-consciousness, that connection to the ancestors that is always pulling Black bodies, particularly Black women, between two worlds as they negotiate a universe filled with racialized minefields” (p. 176) – which we activate through making and sharing art that canonizes our Ancestors. BAM fostered an explosion of Black creatives and venues that celebrated Blackness throughout the global Black Diaspora, and McMillon argues that Black womxn were at its fore. McMillonand Waters (2018) documented our a/r/t/ography at the 2016 BAM Conference: like Trade/itions that same year, the conference brought together artists as living inquiries who taught and learned Ancestral knowledge. It was hosted by Dillard University and Harvard University's Hutchins's Center in New Orleans, one of the most Ancestrally significant cities in the west for descendants of the Slave Trade.

The BAM conference was a space for practicing public embodiment. In contrast: the work of Jacobs and Davis (2017) – a Black clinical social worker and mixed-race art therapist, respectively – presents a more private practice of a/r/tography through therapy for Black womxn in the DC metropolitan area who srvived childhood abuse and neglect. Jacobs and Davis facilitated group sessions that included artmaking and trauma-informed discussions. Emerging themes centered on myths and stereotypes about Black womxn, sexuality, invisibility, and hope. Jacobs and Davis highlight how participants co-created knowledge about Black womxn's lives through sharing their personal stories and/in their art, as they forged safety together.

Critical Geography

Critical geography is the examination of physical spaces as social constructions wherein daily realities are de/re/constituted, negotiated, and performed (alexander, 2022b; Ko & Hong, 2019; Lefebvre, 1991). Ko and Hong call attention to ways that peoples’ inter/actions and movements in a space shape and are shaped by conditions that are fluid, simultaneous, and overlapping – (2019) and thus, allow for both meaning- and place-making by participants within and beyond a given inquiry. Soja (1996, 2010) asserts that spaces are neither dead nor neutral – but filled with spatial, social, and historical materials that inform experiences of and within them. Lefebvre also implicates political, cultural, economic, and legal conditions as informing interactions in spaces.

Literature about Black womxn's (and girls’) practices of critical geography suggests that we prioritize making sense of our environments as spaces of subalternity, to construct alternative spaces (e.g., BAM or art-informed group therapy) that help to keep us safe. Moreover: our practices are underpinned by intersectionalities of racism, sexism, and classism that render our lives less valuable than the lives of others in the west. Citing Jones (2010), McCurn's (2018) ethnography examined how Black womxn and girls from Oakland's poorer neighborhoods pursued access to clothing that signaled them as belonging to a higher social class than their own, explicitly as a survival strategy. They understood that their lack of protection from structural and interpersonal violence was informed by their intersecting race, class, and gender; thus, they sought protection and respect by embodying womxn and girls who they perceived to receive both in society.

Where the Black girls in Oakland reconstituted themselves to navigate their spaces safely, the Black mothers who danced as strippers in Mayers’ Atlanta-based ethnography (2019) reconstituted strip clubs as spaces of fantasy – and themselves as subjects/objects of desire. Importantly, they did so to encourage patrons to spend more money – and thus, support their social mobility. Like these mothers, the Black femme leaders of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance created communal food systems across the Deep South and Midwest as spaces that Black people could use to liberate themselves from racism, classism, and patriarchy (Reese & Cooper, 2021). The Alliance named stopping Black farmers’ land loss, retaining Black dignity, and supporting Black sustainability and health as their motivations for forming in 2016.

Relationships as Inquiry

A more loosely-defined embodied approach is examining relationships – among scholars, and with their study participants and studies themselves – as sites of inquiry in their own rights. Field researcher Caretta (2015) uses Haraway's (1991) situated knowledge to highlight how contextual, hierarchical, and experiential relationships impacted epistemic practices among community members of an East African village, her field assistants, and herself. In addition to accounting for their own liminal positionalities, Caretta (2015) and Hordge-Freeman (2018) bring attention to the importance of researchers weaving personal, professional, political, physical, and emotional experiences into their projects. Both assert that scholar subjectivities interact with those of participants to inform data they co-construct. For this reason, Hordge-Freeman suggests that researchers (a) take time to build personal relationships with participants and (b) pay attention to their own emotions as indicative of needing to revise study procedures, protocols, and techniques (2018). Vanner (2015) similarly suggests that they develop data collection and analysis plans with participants, to foreground participants’ cultures and ethics in studies.

Oba's (2018) study of an Afrocentric community program as intervention for Black youth in Toronto encapsulates recommendations from Caretta, Hordge-Freeman, and Vanner. The program was co-designed and co-facilitated by Black Elders and youth; it included focus groups, and many of the cultural practices that I discuss as part of my constructs for embodiment. Oba's inquiry of the program was consistent with practices of culturally responsive research: she described her process for collecting and analyzing data as subjective and political such that her choices reflected who she was as a Black person, community member, parent, and social worker. Although Oba's experience was one of inclusion, it should not be presumed as a given because scholars share Blackness (and womxnhood) with potential study participants. Beoku-Betts (1994) recounts her challenges in gaining trust with Black womxn in the Gullah/Geechee communities of South Carolina and Georgia for her fieldwork: despite sharing race, gender, and rural roots, Beoku-Betts and the womxn did not share nationality, class, ethnic cultures, or values about womxn's roles in society. Community members also did not trust Beoku-Betts as a researcher from a western institution. Thus, she had to invest more effort than she anticipated into building rapport by assuming community duties. Although research convention might frame these challenges negatively, they are generative when framed through constructs of embodiment.

In black feminism in qualitative inquiry (2019), scholar and clinical practitioner Evans-Winters characterizes Black womxn's processes of developing knowledge – including about other people – as slow, organic, mosaic-like, holistic, multi-textual, sacred, and communal (pp. 137–139). Citing Dillard and hooks, she calls these processes part of “daughtering” (p. 137) – which she describes as coming with no handbook, requiring keen observation, decoding others’ words, withstanding others dismissing us and our knowledge, and serving others. Perhaps as an illustration of daughtering: Evans-Winters presents excerpts from reciprocal text message exchanges that she sustained with an inquiry informant for two years. Through them, she and the informant entered each other's worlds as Black womxn; reflective of embodiment's spiritual, lived, and communal nature, she describes this text exchange as a “call and response” (p. 121).

Doing Embodied Inquiry

These exemplars position researchers to engage in practices for/by/about/with Black womxn by doing knowledge alongside us in ways that honor our ancestry, creativity, daily experiences, and needs for spaces of safety and/in community. The cited scholars lived out knowledge by becoming in their research environments and processes: they had to confront legacies of positivism, racism, imperialism, classism, and other agents of disembodiment. As a scholar, I prioritize becoming by creating projects of which I can be a part. For example, I have designed a curriculum for a culture-informed therapeutic peer mentoring program to serve Black femme people (alexander, 2022c. The program's intention is to encourage participants to embody knowledge through exploring their unique Ancestral and familial ties, communing with nature, engaging their geospatial locations and emotions, and creating art for collective inquiry and teaching. The curriculum allows me to participate in it, which gives me an opportunity to do culturally responsive inquiry through being embodied alongside other Black womxn.

Closing Thoughts

In this paper, I present a possible conceptualization of embodiment that is rooted in Black womxnhood; I then use its constructs to relate embodiment to “post” epistemic frames, and present examples of embodied inquiries. I also warn against disembodiment through social science's more conventional methodological approaches. Said approaches will continue to misunderstand, silence, and/or neglect Black womxn. Yet engaging embodied approaches, in service to advancing social work, can help mitigate some of this harm while honoring Black womxn's theories of change as integral to the field's scholarly processes and progressions.

Considering Embodied Inquiry in Social Work

Scholars should seek to understand the origins, significance, and operationalization of epistemic, ontological, and axiological constructs in Black womxn's lives to avoid disembodying and pathologizing our knowledge that transcends academe's conventions. As living inquires, we can engage our unique ancestries, spiritualities, experiences, senses of community, and countless other constructs as part of how we contribute to projects’ framings, data collection and analysis plans, findings disseminations, etc. It is pivotal that scholars engage our constructs in their work, especially in projects that claim to be for our benefit, for several reasons.

First, social work's knowledge conventions are rooted in practices that cannot fully accommodate Black womxn. For example: studies that explore participants’ interactions with(in) their environments reflect social constructivist models. Said approaches can highlight Black womxn's contextual sensemaking, but do not typically engage physi(ologi)cal, Ancestral, and/or spiritual axiologies or ontologies writ large. Positivist approaches forego embodied knowledge entirely because it is incompatible with the Scientific Method (alexander & Pasque, 2022) – except for sensory observations that are presumed to be “universal,” which is a disembodying assumption. Critical frames interrogate power structures as influencing epistemic processes, but do so while discursively assuming that these structures are fixed in society. These approaches have yielded invaluable knowledge about Black womxn's experiences, environments, and needs, but they are rooted in frames that are removed from our approaches – and thus cannot fully engage us as producers, sites, theories, performers, or performances of knowledge.

Second, and related: Black womxn's epistemologies include axiological and ontological constructs that extend beyond those that social work most often presupposes in womxn's lives, because they are constituted through embodied intersectionalities of racism and classism alongside sexism – as well as other oppressions like imperialism, heteronormativity, ableism, etc. Consistent with feminist social work principles and theories of change that center womxn of Color, improving our lives via scholarship requires addressing these inequities as part of inquiry; this piece's exemplar inquiries offer possible models for doing so. To this point: exploration of embodiment's relationship to “post” frames suggests that opportunities exist for scholars to engage in storytelling for/by/about/with Black womxn through prioritizing how we each become and do knowledge in our daily lives while navigating social issues that led us to social work – as clients, practitioners, students, etc. – in the first place. In support of feminist social work, embodied approaches can (a) engage interactions, integrations, and exercises of power across contexts, (b) account for unique countless constructions of knowledge, and (c) dismantle power differentials between scholars and participants through shared humanity in inquiry.

Preparing to Do Embodied Scholarship

As with embodiment itself, there are infinite entry points for engaging with it through a scholar's chosen constructs, theories, methods, etc. However, taking such a turn requires what Voithofer (2013) calls a promiscuity of methodologies. Citing Butler, Dillard, Crenshaw, and others, Voithofer argues that promiscuous methodologies allow for customized examinations in inquiry by destabilizing (a) sociocultural categories that inform structures of oppression (i.e., the “parts” of a person), and (b) the notion that certain methods must be used for certain types of projects. Such a shift could help to liberate social work inquiry for/by/about/with Black womxn from confines of certain schools of thought, fields of study from which scholars borrow, methods of data collection and analysis, etc. It could also help to liberate Black womxn by expanding how we are each constituted in knowledge projects, as living methodologies and inquiries.

For scholars who hesitate to fully delve into embodied approaches: the cited examples illustrate how this frame can be integrated with social science's more conventional ones through a methodological promiscuity that creates space for subjective knowledge. Most of the studies employed popular methods (e.g., focus groups and participant observations), but none of them used said methods as their sole approach to inquiry. Instead: all required researchers to do knowledge as mutual members of a community by “bringing their whole selves” (Hordge-Freeman, 2018) into their inquiries’ processes (rather than remaining distant and “scientific”; alexander & Pasque, 2022). In doing so, these scholars leaned into being vulnerable and flexible in their projects – consistent with feminist social work principles of egalitarian relationships, engaging emotional knowledge while doing the work, and closing power differentials therein.

Methodological promiscuity allows scholars to have feminist relationships with their studies’ participants, processes, and audiences – and with themselves. A liberation of this sort can support them in redefining and re-operationalizing knowledge construction, power, and positioning in ways that uphold feminist social work principles and promote theories of change that engage and amplify Black womxn's epistemic practices. Moreover, it can help scholars to become embodied in their inquiries while creating possibilities for nuanced explorations of Black womxn's embodiments with consideration for each of our gender expressions, a/romantic lives, disabilities, home geographies, socioeconomic statuses, and additional infinite manifestations of our personhoods. Such nuance would further enrich projects for/by/about/with Black womxn: each manifestation of our humanity carries its own possible constructs through which we embody knowledge more complexly as living inquiries. The intersectional possibilities of these constructs are beyond what I could address here, but they each deserve exploration through their epistemic, axiological, and ontological frames. I look forward to the continued growth of discourses in support of this broader knowledge project in social work research and practice, to uplift Black womxn's ways of being and knowing in work that is for/by/about/with us.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

e alexander

Notes

Author Biography

e alexander is an assistant professor in the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare. Centering BIWOC and QTPOC, their work focuses on anti-racist and anti-colonialist approaches to research, training, professionalization, organizational operations, and labor politics.

References

Adams

T. E.

Jones

S. H.

(2014). Autoethnography is queer. In Denzin

N. K.

Lincoln

Y. S.

Smith

L. T.

(Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 373–390). Sage.

alexander

(2020). Embodied: Afrocentric spiritual identity development of Black femme students attending predominantly-white institutions. In Snipes

J. T.

Manson

(Eds.), Remixed and reimagined: innovations in religion, spirituality, and (inter)faith in higher education (pp. 71–87). Myers Educational Press.

alexander

(2022a). Feminized anti-Blackness in the professoriate. Gender, Work, & Organization, 29(3), 723–738. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12798

alexander

Pasque

P. A.

(2022). Advancing innovation of culturally sustaining research and researchers. In Pasque

P. A.

alexander

(Eds.), Advancing culturally responsive research and researchers: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods (pp. 239–253). Routledge.

alexander, e. (2022b). Locating themselves: Black womxn’s geographies of professional socialization. Research in Education Policy and Management, 4(2) (Special Issue: Reimagining Educational Policy and Leadership Beyond the Plunder of Neoliberal Technorationality), 80–98. https://doi.org/10.46303/repam.2022.8

alexander

. (2022c). Healing ourselves through Black mothers' wisdom. In Kress

T. M.

Lake

Stein

(Eds.), Radically dreaming: Illuminating freirean praxis in Turbulent Times (pp. 33–45). DIO Press.

Ani

(1994). Yurugu: An African-centered critique of European cultural thought and behavior. Africa World Press.

Astin

A. W.

Astin

H. S.

Lindholm

J. A.

(2011). Assessing students’ spiritual and religious qualities. Journal of College Student Development, 52(1), 39–61. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2011.0009

Beoku-Betts

(1994). When Black is not enough: Doing field research among Gullah women. NWSA Journal, 6(3), 413–433. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4316353

10.

Bhabha

H. K.

(1994). The location of culture. Routledge.

11.

Black

C. J.

(2003). Translating principles into practice: Implementing the feminist and strengths perspectives in work with battered women. Affilia, 18(3), 332–349. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0886109903254578

12.

Butler

(1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge.

13.

Caretta

M. A.

(2015). Situated knowledge in cross-cultural, cross-language research: A collaborative reflexive analysis of researcher, assistant and participant subjectivities. Qualitative Research, 15(4), 489–505. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1468794114543404

14.

Childers

S. M.

(2013). The materiality of fieldwork: An ontology of feminist becoming. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(5), 599–609. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2013.786845

15.

Christophers

(2007). Ships in the night: Journeys in postcolonialism and cultural imperialism. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 10, 283–302. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1367877907080145

16.

Collins

P. H.

(1986). Learning from the outsider within: The sociological significance of Black feminist thought. Social Problems, 33(6), s14–s32. https://doi.org/10.2307/800672

17.

Collins

P. H.

(1997). Comment on Heckman’s “Truth and method: Feminist standpoint theory revisited”: Where’s the power? Signs, 22, 375–381. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3175278?origin=JSTOR-pdf https://doi.org/10.1086/495162

18.

Collins

P. H.

(2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (10th Anniversary ed.). Routledge.

19.

Collins

P. H.

(2015). No guarantees: Symposium on Black Feminist Thought. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(13), 2349–2354. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1058512

20.

Crenshaw

(1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics (Vol. 139, pp. 139–167). University of Chicago Legal Forum. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8

21.

Crenshaw

(1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1300. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039

22.

Dewsbury

J. D.

(2018). Performative, non-representational, and affect-based research: Seven injunctions. In D. DeLyser, S. Herbert, S. Aitken, M. Crang, & L. McDowell (Eds.) The SAGE handbook of qualitative geography (pp. 321–334). Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9780857021090.

23.

Diedrich

Gates

Pedersen

(1999). Black imagination and the middle passage. Oxford University Press.

24.

Dillard

C. B.

(2000). The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen: Examining an endarkened feminist epistemology in educational research and leadership. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 13(6), 661–681. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518390050211565

25.

Dillard

C. B.

(2006). On spiritual strivings: Transforming an African American woman’s academic life. State University of New York Press.

26.

Dillard

C. B.

(2014). When the ground is Black, the ground is fertile: Exploring endarkened feminist epistemology and healing methodologies in the spirit. In Denzin

N. K.

Lincoln

Y. S.

Smith

L. T.

(Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 277–292). Sage.

27.

Dillard

C. B.

Abdur-Rashid

Tyson

C. A.

(2000). My soul is a witness: Affirming pedagogies of the spirit. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 13(5), 447–462. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518390050156404

28.

Du Bois

W. E. B.

(1903). The souls of Black folk. Oxford University Press.

29.

Evans-Winters

(2019). Black feminism in qualitative inquiry: A mosaic for writing our daughter’s body. Routledge.

30.

Gannon

Davies

(2012). Postmodern, post-structural, and critical theories. In Hesse-Biber

S. N.

(Ed.), Handbook of feminist research: Theory and praxis (pp. 65–91). Sage.

31.

Given

L. M.

(2008). The SAGE encyclopedia of qualitative research methods. Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412963909.

32.

Gundaker

(1998). Signs of diaspora/diaspora of signs: Literacies, creolization, and vernacular practice in African-America. Oxford University Press.

33.

Haraway

(1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of women. Routledge.

34.

Harding

(1986). The science question in feminism. Open University Press.

35.

Harding

(1992). Rethinking standpoint epistemology: What is “strong objectivity?” The Centennial Review, 36(3), 437–470. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23739232

36.

Henry

(2006). “There’s salt-water in our blood”: The “middle passage” epistemology of two Black mothers regarding the spiritual education of their daughters. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 19(3), 329–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518390600696786

37.

Heron

Reason

(1997). A participative inquiry paradigm. Qualitative Inquiry, 3(3), 274–294. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F107780049700300302

38.

Hesse-Biber

S. N.

(2014). Feminist research: Exploring, interrogating, and transforming the interconnections of epistemology, methodology, and method. In Hesse-Biber

S. N.

(Ed.), Handbook of feminist research: Theory and praxis (pp. 2–26). Sage.

39.

hooks

(2000). All about love: New visions. Morrow.

40.

Hopkins

(2012). Women’s studies and arts-informed research: Some Australian examples. In Knowles

J. G.

Cole

A. L.

(Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues (pp. 558–569). Sage.

41.

Hordge-Freeman

(2018). Bringing your whole self to research”: The power of the researcher’s body, emotions, and identities in ethnography. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 17(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1609406918808862

42.

Irwin

de Cosson

(2004). A/r/tography: Rendering self through arts-based living inquiry. Pacific Educational Press.

43.

Irwin

R. L.

(2012). A/r/tography. In Given

L. M.

(Ed.), The SAGE encyclopedia of qualitative research methods (pp. 27–28). Sage Publications.

44.

Iwowo

(2014). Post-colonial theory. In Coghlan

Brydon-Miller

D. M.

(Eds.), The SAGE encyclopedia of action research (pp. 632–633). Sage.

45.

Jacobs

Davis

(2017). Challenging the myths of Black women—a short-term, structured, art experience group: Exploring the intersections of race, gender, and intergenerational trauma. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 87(2–3), 200–219. https://doi.org/10.1080/00377317.2017.1324091

46.

James

(2017). Indigenous epistemology explored through Yoruba Orisha traditions in the African Diaspora. Women & Therapy, 41(1–2), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/02703149.2017.1324192

47.

Jones

(2010). Between good and ghetto: African American girls and inner city violence. Rutgers University Press.

48.

Hong

J. J.

(2019). Social production of space and everyday microaggressions: A case study of (im)migrant youth in South Korea. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 5(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2019.1697468

49.

Lazzari

M. M.

Colarossi

Collins

K. S.

(2009). Feminists in social work: Where have all the leaders gone? Affilia, 24(4), 348–359. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0886109909343552

50.

Lefebvre

(1991). The production of space (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Blackwell Publishers.

51.

Manzi

Ojeda

Hawkins

(2019). Enough wandering around!”: Life trajectories, mobility, and place making in neoliberal academia. The Professional Geographer, 71(2), 355–363. https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2018.1531036

52.

Mayers

Q. S.

(2019). On the edge: Mind, spirit, and booty in Atlanta’s strip clubs [Doctoral Dissertation, University of California Santa Barbara]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

53.

McCurn

A. S.

(2018). “Keeping it fresh”: How young Black women negotiate self representation and controlling images in urban space. City & Community, 17(1), 134–149. https://doi.org/10.1111/cico.12274

54.

McMillon

(2018). Black feminism, the ancestors speak, and the women of the black arts movement. Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies, 11(6), 175–185. 1. https://www.jpanafrican.org/docs/vol11no6/final-Kim-21-McMillon.pdf

55.

McMillon

Water

(2018). Dillard university-harvard’s hutchins center black arts movement conference, September 9–11, 2016. Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies, 11(6), 306–334. 4. https://www.jpanafrican.org/docs/vol11no6/final-Kim-35-EricWaters.pdf

56.

Merleau-Ponty

(1968). The visible and the invisible (A. Lingis, Trans.). Northwestern University Press.

57.

Mirón

(2014). Transnational, national, and indigenous racial subjects: Moving from critical discourse to praxis. In Denzin

N. K.

Lincoln

Y. S.

Smith

L. T.

(Eds.), Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies (pp. 547–562). Sage Publications.

58.

Myers

L. J.

(1988). Understanding an Afrocentric worldview: Introduction to an optimal psychology. Kendall/Hunt.

59.

Myers

L. J.

Speight

S. L.

Highlen

P. S.

Cox

C. I.

Reynolds

A. L.

Adams

E. M.

Hanley

P. C.

(1991). Identity development and worldview: Toward an optimal conceptualization. Journal of Counseling & Development, 70, 54–63. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1002/j.1556-6676.1991.tb01561.x

60.

Nairn

Munro

Smith

(2005). A counter-narrative of a “failed” interview. Qualitative Research, 5(2), 221–244. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1468794105050836

61.

Nancy

J. L.

(2000). Of being singular plural. Stanford University Press.

62.

Nandy

(1983). The intimate enemy: Loss and recovery of self under colonialism. Oxford University Press.

63.

Nes

Iadicola

(1989). Toward a definition of feminist social work. Social Work (New York), 34(1), 12–21. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23715611

64.

Oba

(2018). Youth and elders in solidarity: An Afrocentric dialogic approach to research (Sage research methods. cases). Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526484215.

65.

O’Brien

J. T.

(1978). Factory, church, and community: Blacks in antebellum Richmond. Journal of Southern History, 44, 509–536. https://doi.org/10.2307/2207604

66.

Okpalaoka

C. L.

Dillard

C. B.

(2012). Our healing is next to the wound: Endarkened feminisms, spirituality, and wisdom for teaching, learning, and research. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 131, 65–74. https://doi.org/10.1002/ace.422

67.

Peck

M. S.

(1978). The road less traveled: A new psychology of love, traditional values and spiritual growth. Touchstone.

68.

Pelias

R. J.

(2012). Performative inquiry: Embodiment and its challenges. In Knowles

J. G.

Cole

A. L.

(Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues (pp. 186–194). Sage.

69.

Prasad

(2003). Postcolonial theory and organizational analysis: a critical engagement. (Ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.

70.

Reese

A. M.

Cooper

(2021). Making spaces something like freedom: Black feminist praxis in the re/imagining of a just food system. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 20(4), 450–459. https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/2024

71.

Remer

(2012). Feminist therapy. In Frew

Spiegler

M. D.

(Eds.), Contemporary psychotherapies for a diverse world: First revised edition (pp. 373–414). Taylor & Francis.

72.

Said

(1978). Orientalism. Penguin Books.

73.

Seeley

(2014). Extended epistemology. In D. Coghlan & M. Brydon-Miller (Eds.) The SAGE encyclopedia of action research (pp. 328–332). Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446294406.

74.

Simpson

(2011). Dancing on our turtle’s back: Stories of Nishanaabeg recreation, resurgence and a new emergence. ARP|Arbeiter Ring Publishing.

75.

Soja

E. W.

(1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. Blackwell Publishers.

76.

Soja

E. W.

(2010). Seeking spatial justice. University of Minnesota Press.

77.

Somerville

M. J.

(2004). Tracing bodylines: The body in feminist poststructural research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 17(1), 47–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/0951839032000150220

78.

Spivak

G. C.

(1987). In other worlds: Essays in cultural politics. Methuen.

79.

Spivak

G. C.

(1988). Can the subaltern speak? In Nelson

Grossberg

(Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 217–313). University of Illinois Press.

80.

Takagi

(1999). Rearing wolves to our own destruction: Slavery in Richmond Virginia, 1782–1865. The University Press of Virginia.

81.

Tangenberg

K. M.

Kemp

(2002). Embodied practice: Claiming the body’s experience, agency, and knowledge for social work. Social Work, 47(1), 9–18. https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/47.1.9

82.

Vanner

(2015). Positionality at the center: Constructing an epistemological and methodological approach for a western feminist doctoral candidate conducting research in the postcolonial. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 14(4), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1609406915618094

83.

van Rhyn

Barwick

Donelly

(2021). Embodiment as an instrument for empathy in social work. Australian Social Work, 74(2), 146–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/0312407X.2020.1839112

84.

Voithofer

(2013). Promiscuous feminisms for troubling times. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(5), 524–536. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2013.786847

85.

Wade

(1964). Slavery in the cities: The South, 1820–1860. Oxford University Press.

86.

Walters

Mohammed

Evans-Campbell

Beltrán

Chae

Duran

(2011). Bodies don’t just tell stories, they tell histories: Embodiment of historical trauma among American Indians and Alaska natives. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 8(1), 179–189. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1742058x1100018x

87.

Wang

Burris

M. A.

(1997). Photovoice: Concept, methodology, and use for participatory needs assessment. Health Education & Behavior, 24(3), 369–387. https://doi.org/10.1177/109019819702400309

88.

Wilson

Flicker

(2014). Arts-based action research. In Coghlan

Brydon-Miller

(Eds.), The SAGE encyclopedia of action research (pp. 59–62). Sage.

89.

Wong

Y. R.

Vinsky

(2021). Beyond implicit bias: Embodied cognition, mindfulness, and critical reflective practice in social work. Australian Social Work, 74(2), 186–197. https://doi.org/10.1080/0312407X.2020.1850816

90.

Zalewski

(2011). Feminist epistemology. In Miller

R. L.

Brewer

(Eds.), The A-Z of social research (pp. 114–117). Sage.

Becoming Black Womxn Through Embodied Inquiry

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Embodied Research: Possible Constructs

Construct One: Ancestral Spirituality

Construct Two: Lived Experience

Construct Three: Community

Embodying the Constructs as Inquiry

Bridging Embodiment and Other Epistemologies

Embodiment ↔ Postmodernism

Embodiment ↔ Poststructuralism

Embodiment ↔ Postcolonialism

Bridging Epistemologies Through Embodied Practices

The Violence of Disembodied Research

Embodied Methodologies: Exemplars

A/r/tography

Critical Geography

Relationships as Inquiry

Doing Embodied Inquiry

Closing Thoughts

Considering Embodied Inquiry in Social Work

Preparing to Do Embodied Scholarship

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

Author Biography

References