Duoethnography as Transformative Praxis: Conversations about Nourishment and Coercion in the COVID‐Era Academy

Abstract

This article introduces the feminist praxis of duoethnography as a way to examine the COVID era. As a group of diverse, junior, midcareer, and senior feminist scholars, we developed a methodology to critically reflect on our positions in our institutions and social worlds. As a method, duoethnography emphasizes the dialogical intimacy that can form through anthropological work. While autoethnography draws on individual daily lives to make sense of sociopolitical dynamics, duoethnography emphasizes the relational character of research across people and practices. Taking the relational aspects of knowledge production seriously, we conceptualized this praxis as a transformative method for facilitating radical empathy, mobilizing our collective voice, and merging together our partial truths. As collective authors, interviewers, and interlocutors of this article, the anonymity of duoethnography allows us to vocalize details of the experience of living through COVID‐19 that we could not have safely spoken about publicly or on our own.

Disability studies in war and care: How to do work otherwise? A conversation between anthropology‐and‐disability‐studies scholars in relation to Russia's invasion of Ukraine

“…https://culanth.org/fieldsights/a-manifesto-forpatchwork-ethnography. See also (Valdez et al, 2022). For examples of burgeoning experimental ethnographic projects, see https://www.umass.edu/social-sciences/academics/ethnographic-research/ethnography-collective.…”

“…Drawing inspiration from the burgeoning forms of mutual aid and care manifest in social movements, feminist anthropologists have undertaken experiments in horizontal sociality, and new ways to enact solidarity across difference and distance. They have innovated new, experimental forms, and sought to forge new ways of being and working together (Núñez & Suárez, 2021; Núñez & Suárez, 2023; Valdez et al., 2022). 1 This fresh work has posed questions about academic business as usual—interrupting colonial, extractive logics, and exploring ways to do academic work “otherwise” (Reeves, 2022).…”

“There Would Be More Black Spaces”: Care/giving Cartographies during COVID‐19

“…Noting the ways that such a methodological approach may alienate and retraumatize those narrating their experience, we posit that narratives centering on the relational aspects of care/giving hold the potential to uplift the agency of interlocutors and their practices of self-and collective care, as well as to make space for subverting structures of domination within the realm of biomedicine and those issuing diagnoses. By integrating perspectives on care/giving, we have intentionally sought to operationalize a relational approach (as we also sought to interview pairs) that destabilizes the role of the interviewer (see also Valdez et al 2022). Instead of reproducing relations of oppression and domination, documenting narratives of care/giving demand that the interviewer display vulnerability and compassionate solidarity.…”

“…By integrating perspectives on care/giving, we have intentionally sought to operationalize a relational approach (as we also sought to interview pairs) that destabilizes the role of the interviewer (see also Valdez et al. 2022 ). Instead of reproducing relations of oppression and domination, documenting narratives of care/giving demand that the interviewer display vulnerability and compassionate solidarity.…”

Duo-ethnographic Methods: A Feminist Take on Collaborative Research

“…Megan and Emily took the lead on organizing themes, which the whole group then narrowed down; in this process, new concerns arose that we discussed via email, which led to further insights. All participants edited and revised the whole document and then sought approval from individual authors (see Valdez et al 2022).…”