Indignation, impotence and engagement. Notes on challenges to feminist anthropological research

Abstract

Reflecting on experiences, learning, afflictions, and emotions in anthropological research, the feeling of impotence and the suffering that mobilizes us in the fieldwork, with sensitive themes that bring to the fore the life, emotions, and health of racialized and socially excluded women in Brazil, is discussed. We seek to question, in alliance with the ethical-political commitment that moves us in academic research, our limits in ethnographic work and the contribution that sharing results can generate in the socio-political debate and the daily life of research subjects. How far can we succeed (not strictly academically) when we are willing to carry out engaged research with research themes and subjects? Why does such a reflective and involved posture leave us so anguished in the face of the challenges of social transformation of the studied realities? Analyzing the mobilization of women who implanted the Essure permanent sterilization device in Brazil, I address the issues of the status of knowledge and the epistemic disputes in play; the temporality of waiting, and how it operates between research subjects, also touching the researcher and her results; finally, what model of science can we reaffirm, in the clash between disciplinary fields as disparate as medicine and anthropology.