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Inte04


Secret uncertainty: queer, crip and intersectional perspectives on everyday reorientation 
Convenors:
Emma Eleonorasdotter (Åbo Akademi University)
Christine Bylund (Umeå University)
Jonas Bornsäter (Lund university)
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Chairs:
Emma Eleonorasdotter (Åbo Akademi University)
Jonas Bornsäter (Lund university)
Christine Bylund (Umeå University)
Format:
Panel
Stream:
Intersectionalities
:
B2.51
Sessions:
Saturday 10 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Prague

Short Abstract:

A particular, vast realm of everyday uncertainty regards conditions in risk of being revealed. Discretion can be optional, or crucial for safety in everyday life. How do secret cultural practices shape the world and how can we study them, in ethical and yet not compromising ways?

Long Abstract:

Cultural practices are easier to study when they are performed visibly, than when they are kept away from view. However, a considerable part of everyday life is regarded as private and therefore hidden, and some practices and experiences are kept more hidden than others.

The secret dimensions of cultural life are essential to meaning-making, proximities, and distances, and for many, these dimensions are vital and central to how life is shaped. For some, secrecy is vital for a sense of safety in everyday life. Certain identities and activities require a level of clandestiness. Illegal statuses, disabilities, non-normative sexualities, and pharmacological use are a few examples of lived human conditions that are often kept secret in fear of social retribution, punishment, or stigma. Thus, secrecy can be understood as a response to cultural stigma or marginalization. However, in this panel, we propose the understanding that secrecy does not equal isolation; rather, secrecy often spurs specific affective connectedness through networking, friendships, communication, and gatherings.

Methodologically and ethically, secrecy can be challenging and ethnographies on sensitive topics depend on trust and interpretations. How can we ethically approach that which is kept secrect without compromising research participants or their everyday practices? What can we learn about everyday uncertainty and the reorientation towards certainty? This panel welcomes ethnographical and empirical, as well as philosophical and theoretical contributions drawing on the conditions of secrecy in the present as well as the past.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Saturday 10 June, 2023, -
Session 2 Saturday 10 June, 2023, -