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Paper Short Abstract

This paper considers how anthropological epistemologies became harmful to me, a trans anthropologist conducting fieldwork during a time of increased transphobia in Britain. I also show how I gained relief from anthropological ways of knowing by practicing community printmaking alongside fieldwork.

Paper Abstract

In this paper I consider how anthropological epistemologies became unhelpful and harmful to me, a trans anthropologist undertaking PhD fieldwork during a time of increased transphobia in Britain. One morning while conducting fieldwork about Welsh language revival in Cardiff, I opened my phone to learn that a local trans person had died by suicide, the third trans person I knew to have died by suicide that week. In the aftermath, a friend reflected, ‘It really felt like it could’ve been any of us’. I am grateful that anthropology has taught me how to connect local events of injustice with more dispersed, structural issues. But on a personal level, these ways of knowing can grow heavy. I struggled to continue fieldwork after this event. My PhD research seemed pointless, the impact of structural transphobia on people around me was all I could see. Seeking to know anything else through anthropology felt impossible. I had to look elsewhere. Consequently, this paper also explores how I, a trans artist, gained relief and distance from anthropological ways of knowing by engaging with community arts practices alongside fieldwork. I began a printmaking mentorship at a community print studio, putting my fieldwork duties aside one day a week to engage with different ways of thinking from those that were consuming me. This “dis-epistemology” (Ben-Moshe 2018), letting go of certain anthropological knowledge for a short time each week, was crucial to my recovery and fieldwork completion. Finally, I consider what anthropology can learn from such experiences.