Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I draw from my (auto)ethnographic fieldwork during and after the Covid-19 lockdown in queer-feminist self-defense groups, in order to reflect on what it means to do anthropology as an observant participant, as part of a community formed by shared embodied vulnerability.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I propose an embodied approach to anthropological work in a field traversed by violence, by drawing from preliminary findings of my (auto)ethnography in queer-feminist self-defense in Greece. My ethnography explores how diverse online and offline practices of survival are built in communities formed by common embodied experiences of SGBV (Sexual and Gender-Based Violence). I follow a conceptualisation of self-defense as a subaltern practice, through which queer and femme bodies train to appropriate the violence that constructs them, when learning the language of violence becomes the only available choice. Carrying out this research during and after the Covid-19 lockdown posed questions by those who are not safe at home, on how the unequally distributed vulnerability intensifies the violence experienced by confined bodies, driving them to seek networks of community regardless of geographical location. Excerpts of my autoethnography diary are used here to write a “somatopolitical fiction” (Preciado 2008), examining the ways with which violence, confinement and resistance become inscribed on my body and bodies like mine. With this, I seek to question what it means to do anthropology as part of a community formed by shared embodied vulnerability. I aim to reflect on the practice of anthropology as situated knowledge; to critically ask “with whose blood are my eyes crafted” (Haraway 1998), when my own “observant participation” (Campbell & Lassiter 2015) as a trans*/researcher positions me both within but also at the margins of a field embedded in violence.