Description
In this paper, I explore the following question: what are possible ways of writing that connect concerns of embodiment (including embodied knowledges) with issues of structural oppression and resistance within larger socio-political worlds? I am particularly interested in how this question relates to embodied issues of performance, race, gender and sexual orientation, as I ask this question in the context of research on the space of the Ballroom scene. By “ballroom scene,” I make reference to the underground black and latinx LGBTQ+ scene created in NYC around the 1970s, which includes performance forms such as voguing and runway (this is not the ballroom scene of foxtrot or salsa). This scene has continued to exist in its underground form in the USA since and has now spread to many other spaces around the world, transporting and translating its postcolonial, antiracist, queer and feminist politics along with its performance forms to the various geographical spaces where it has traveled to. My ethnographic fieldwork focuses on the small and recently emerging ballroom scene in Switzerland.
In my exploration of ways to write about bodies, embodiement, oppression and resistance, I consider conerns regarding writing of fieldwork and of analysis. For writing in fieldwork, this includes fieldnotes but also exploring the possibilities offered by other mediums such as filming, photographing, and enskillment (in this case, learning a particular performance form, which can be a way of writing with / into the body). For writing of analysis, I include writing up, but also explore what can be learned from editing film, curating photographic series, and attempts at translating embodied learned knowledge of the reseracher into forms that can be shared with others.
