Epistemic-corporeal workshops: putting strong reflexivity into practice

The approaches of decolonial anthropology and feminist epistemologies have allowed new reflections on ethnographic practice. Drawing from this framework, we propose epistemic-corporeal workshops as spaces focused on the body and emotions for researchers to discuss their work, and as privileged methodologies for a collective and embodied “strong reflexivity” (placing the subject on the same level than the object of research [Harding 1991]) about the purpose of ethnographic work: not only about “knowing what” but also about “knowing how,” as well as about aspects of research that have traditionally been discarded. In the article, we bring together the description of the exercises of the workshops, the collective reflections arising from them, and three theoretical artifacts for their analysis: “corporeal practices in research”; “committed articulation”; and “off-field epistemologies.” As a result, we analyze the role of the body and emotions in the research process; the networks and attachments that are generated, how and from where we commit ourselves to what we research; relations of power and epistemic violence in research practice; and the dilemmas, encounters, and tensions between research and activism. This article is a preliminary approach and an explanation from the designers and facilitators of the workshops who do not have the proper knowledge themselves, but who create said knowledge with the participants of these spaces as well as developing new tools for questioning power relationships between the participants and the researcher.