sjsca

Special Issue

Vol. 31 No. 1 (2025): Reciprocal Vulnerability: Privilege, Violence, and Solidarity from Fieldwork to Academia

Unveiling Vulnerability: Positionality and Affective Territories in Psychiatry and Academia

Submitted
January 8, 2024
Published
2025-11-13

Abstract

This article explores the process of “unveiling” researcher positionality during fieldwork in Swiss psychiatric spaces and in academia, whilst the researcher herself has a personal con­nection to the topic as a family member of someone with long-term psychological difficul­ties. I argue that vulnerability generates what I call “affective territories”. These are deci­sive in producing forms of knowledge that would otherwise escape researchers in fields where epistemic injustice is systemic. It shows how this positionality can become central in entering spaces of care and solidarity. But this unveiling also generated personal doubts concerning scholarly credibility. This paper tackles why, arguing that many academic cir­cles still equate such credibility with keeping an “objective” distance and remaining emo­tionally non-vulnerable. It highlights a paradox in anthropology: while reflexive inquiries into the affective and political entanglements within social suffering are epistemologically valued, academic cultures do not always provide supportive spaces for such positionings and methodologies.

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