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

• Published in: Feminist anthropology (Hoboken, N.J.) N.J.), 2022-05, Vol.3 (1), p.92-105
• Main Authors: Valdez, Natali, Carney, Megan, Yates‐Doerr, Emily, Saldaña‐Tejeda, Abril, Hardin, Jessica, Garth, Hanna, Galvez, Alyshia, Dickinson, Maggie
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Autoethnography; Coercion; coercive care; COVID-19; Empathy; feminist methods; Intimacy; nourishment; the academy; transformation
• ISSN: 2643-7961; 2643-7961
• DOI: 10.1002/fea2.12085

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.