Abstract
Petillo and Hlavka (2022), along with the contributing authors in their edited volume, critically engage and reflect on questions that center on, “What is the role of a reflective, embodied, intersectional, and entangled methodology within gender-based violence research, and how can one enact this methodology within academic, political, and activist spaces?” This edited volume is organized into three parts, which focus on experiences of intersectional entanglements and embodiments, reflections on academic entanglements and violence, and, finally, chapters that challenge the reader to consider how to humanize feminist methodologies within research that concentrates on gender-based violence.
The authors challenge researchers who study gender-based violence to shift into a new approach that goes beyond a mere consideration of positionality and intersectionality, but, instead, envelopes the full embodiment of what it means to be a researcher who fully listens not only to the topic and participants but also to the impact of the research on the researcher. This edited volume calls for a full embodiment that recognizes and refers back to Fine's (1998) “working the hyphens” between researcher-activist-victim/survivor-academic-practitioner-etc (p. 130).
In their introduction to Part III, “Being: Reflective entanglements and (academic) violence by another name,” Petillo and Hlavka (2022) wrote, Embodied methodology requires a recognition of the multiple contexts in which knowledge is produced, shared, gained, wielded, and understood. It requires reflection and recognition of being witness to others and its impact, just as it requires recognition of how external concepts are projected onto that witnessing. Framing one's work through embodied methodology essentially requires dislocation and discomfort (pp. 74–75).
As I read this book, I was reminded of an experience that I had while a doctoral student. I was struggling with how to incorporate the entanglement that I felt in navigating my various identities, including practitioner-teacher-researcher, but also my lived experiences, particularly as a victim-survivor of sexual violence. By this point in my program, I had read extensively on qualitative methodologies, critical theories, and the roles of engaging with positionality and intersectionality. However, I also felt barriers facing me as I navigated an ivory tower where I faced frequent reminders to not be vulnerable, along with the unsolicited feedback at times received from academics when researching gender-based violence within the academy. There was an obvious lack of safety I felt in naming certain embodied experiences.
I was about to give one of my first, solo paper presentations within the program during one of my classes and wanted to “practice” what it felt like to name some of my experiences as a victim-survivor in an academic space and step into, at least what I thought, was critical positionality in the context of my work. I was incredibly nervous but very briefly and broadly named an experience in relation to how I positioned myself as a researcher in gender-based violence work. In written feedback that I received both on my paper and presentation from one of my professors, she wrote that she had to admit that she was nervous and skeptical of my naming my personal experiences in the context of research and how it might be received. It was not a nervousness shared in solidarity but a nervousness stemming from her judgement of me as I named an embodied experience that remains entangled in my work. Too often, even from other feminist researchers and activists, these are the comments that I have received when situating myself and body within this work.
Although I wish I could have read Petillo and Hlavka's (2022) edited book when I was a doctoral student, I still need it now. When searching for what I wanted more of from the authors, I found my junior-faculty self wanting a “how to” guide on navigating the academic spaces of publishing and presenting that remains aligned with an embodied and entangled framework. However, I believe the authors would argue that providing such a list or guide would not be in alignment with their writing. Instead, I was reminded of one of the contributing author's references to weaving when imagining this framework. Whittaker (2022) wrote, “A person does not become the violence they have experienced, but they will often integrate those experiences into their fabric of self” (p. 48). The authors have encouraged me to pause and engage with embodied listening not only regarding how I show up in this work and am impacted by it, but also in my collaborations and partnerships with victim-survivors, students, researchers, and other activists. Even though the book is focused on methodology, with a leaning towards ethnography, I highly recommend this text to any individual actively engaged and entangled in gender-based violence work.
