Paper Short Abstract:

Following the discussion on the poetics and politics of ethnography, our reflection exposes interrogation against the researcher's authority to favor a polyphonic composition in which the space of the encounter is and a precise sentimental education to give shape to research.

Paper Abstract:

These are reflections born on a sailing boat and developed during our respective doctoral researches. While sailing, we realized how much being at sea and wavering calls into question epistemological certainties, what emerged is the relationship between bodies, the boat, the salt and the water. Sailing the Mediterranean in September, sponsored by the university, also revealed a privilege perhaps comparable to that in which we found ourselves in our research sites. After that brief experience we left our homes and moved to different islands: Kerkennah and Sicily.

Pushing ourselves out, onto a scary threshold, we try to stay and make space for what we don't know yet, listening to the sounds of different languages, standing out as white women, researchers, among human and non-human bodies different in color, shapes and ways of thinking and acting. It is urgent for us that the production of knowledge welcomes in its interrogation the effort, the micro metamorphoses and the respect of those who welcomed us into their place. How can we write about what we have seen and experienced, about what was born from the power of encounters? We are aware of being part of a network of relationships from which we cannot escape, made up of powers and privileges: we aim to depict these entanglements. We want to reflect on how much the field and the method of its construction should be directed towards a space in between, a polyphony and cacophony of voices that make up a space of questioning.