Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies (Sep 2024)
I Came Out to My Father Through My Positionality Chapter: Reflections on Ethics and Risk
Abstract
What are the different risks queer scholars of color face in the field, and how can they evaluate these? Do Queer researchers face similar risks in classrooms as they may in the field? In that case, while a queer researcher may be able to take distance from the field, would they have distance from the risk, discomfort, or harm caused in the field? This is a Creative Nonfiction piece that draws on my experience of fieldwork in Hungary in the summer of 2022, and the process of writing my dissertation ‘Dancing Behind Closed Doors: Negotiating Queerness in Hungarian Traditional Dances’ as an academic in mobility. The dissertation looks at how my interlocutors navigate and subvert modes of traditionally heteronormative dance transmission and choreography. Thus, as a Queer researcher of Colour and AFAB, I often dealt with exoticization and dysphoria as I participated in diverse dance spaces while living in a country where the government rhetoric is vocally anti-LGBTQ+ people. I look at safety not only as a physical assurance but also as an emotional assurance and give importance to the affective impact of fear, shame, inadequacy, and otherness on one’s work and well-being. Through my Creative Nonfiction piece, I enter into dialogue with myself and others, as I try to make sense of the process of my research, and identify my needs- which may resonate with other Queer researchers- to start a conversation around queering notions of what one can consider risk, harm, and safety as movement researchers. In this essay, I work through my experiences from fieldwork and the classroom, looking at risks and harm that I was prepared for or immediately recognised, and those which I identified retrospectively. I speak about facing ignorance in academia towards queerness, dysphoria, the danger around being out, lack of access to a queer social network and queer affirmative advising. I engage with the nuances of speaking about my positionality as a queer person, and considering ethics beyond anonymity (of researchers and interlocutors) before entering the field, which are doubly important with queer academics of color who often face danger if their identity becomes public on a familial, social, legal, and employment level. I also try to make sense of ways in which teaching and classroom learning (that hold the purpose of reflection, taking distance, and growth) are often heteronormative or homophobic and can shrink a queer scholar's imagination of queerness and queer possibilities.
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