When my body is in the way: Body mapping and troublesome positionality

Abstract

abstractIn recent times more embodied and seemingly more participant-empowering research methodologies such as body mapping have been used in a bid to allow greater agency to the ‘researched’, within the ‘researcher-researched’ dyad. While the non-traditional methodology of body mapping does attempt to change the inherent and embedded power dynamics in the research process by offering a more participatory methodology, where the participant actively contributes to the narrative about her, the researcher’s own critical subjectivities also need to be factored into the process.This focus piece draws attention to how the use of feminist methodologies such as body mapping can also impinge on the research process and inadvertently erode the agency of the participant. By drawing on a qualitative study with a group of Black African women it shows that even when an ostensibly feminist methodology is employed, agency and constraint are not fixed but are shifting realities to be (re)negotiated between researcher and participant. The paper thus attempts to problematise the research process within the context of (attempting to) do feminist research and using a methodology such as body mapping.