Affectivating Positionality. Autoethnography of an Extreme Field

Throughout the use of ethnographic and autoethnographic material, this article discusses the conceptualization and the navigation of some of the main tensions I experienced dur- ing the very first approach of my research on the Balkan route, where I was investigating the field to find some of the harsher and neglected consequences of the antimigratory EUropean policies. Starting from reflections triggered by the affective feeling of tensions developed in interaction with the field, a more embodied understanding of researcher’s positionality and investigation is thematized, with particular attention to its ever shifting and grounded dimensions, rather than more conceptual and theoretical ones. In the end it is argued how researcher’s awareness of an undefined, situated, embodied and interactive positionality grounded in autoethnographic reflexivity could be a hermeneutic guideline for avoiding epistemic harms and better acknowledge researcher’s role and practice.