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Current Research

Vol. 33 No. 1 (2026): Portraits of Queerness. Methodological and Ethical Challenges of Narrating Queer Lives

Portraits of Queerness: Methodological and Ethical Challenges of Narrating Queer Lives

Submitted
October 8, 2025
Published
2026-06-25

Abstract

How to narrate queer lives without reproducing the epistemic violence of abstraction? In this article, we address several tensions between portraying, as necessarily reductive process of description and representation, and Queerness, as performance of self-representation blurring cis-heteronormative categories, and therefore generating disciplinary processes. Drawing on these reflections, we also mobilize the flexibility of Queerness to highlight the articulations and assemblages between SOGIESC diversity and indigenous and/or racialized categorizations. Therefore, this article focusses on three key methodological challenges: is it possible—and even desirable—to translate Queer lives to make them intelligible? What is at stake when making visible some experiences and trajectories that somehow pursue the banality of invisibility? And finally, which kinds of light is shed on the knowledge production itself—through reflexivity and the elucidation of ethical dilemmas?

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