%0 Journal Article
%T Reflexivity and Queer Embodiment: Some Reflections on Sexualities Research in Ghana
%A Ellie Gore
%J Feminist Review
%@ 1466-4380
%D 2018
%R 10.1057/s41305-018-0135-6
%X The ¡®reflexive turn¡¯ transcended disciplinary boundaries within the social sciences. Feminist scholars in particular have taken up its core concerns, establishing a wide-ranging literature on reflexivity in feminist theory and practice. In this paper, I contribute to this scholarship by deconstructing the ¡®story¡¯ of my own research as a white, genderqueer, masculine-presenting researcher in Ghana. This deconstruction is based on thirteen months of field research exploring LGBT activism in the capital city of Accra. Using a series of ethnographic vignettes, I examine questions of queer subjectivity, embodiment and self/Other dynamics in the research encounter. Specifically, I interrogate what a reflexive concern for power relations means when researchers share moments of commonality and difference with research participants, here in relation to axes of gender, sexuality, race and class. Finally, I explore the challenge of theorising resistance in light of feminist postcolonial critiques of the politics of representation. I conclude that it is only by locating these tensions and dissonances in the foreground of our inquiries that reflexivity becomes meaningful as a way of rendering knowledge production more accountable and transparent, of practising feminist solidarity, and of excavating our own queer research journeys
%K reflexivity
%K subjectivity
%K feminist methodologies
%K Ghana
%K queer embodiment
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1057/s41305-018-0135-6