Review of the Retreat Situating Knowledge 2020
Tina Bopp & Roan Schmid
In the retreat from September 8 to 10, 2020 in Basel, the Inter-university Doctoral Program Gender Studies CH dealt with the topic of Situating Knowledge. For three days, PhD students from Basel, Berne and Zurich discussed challenges that come along with the feminist call for situating knowledge. Every phase of the research process poses its own questions regarding contextualization, the specific conditions of transnational cooperation or the necessity of translation of results for a broader audience or feminist community.
After a joint arrival on Tuesday afternoon and introductory reflections on multidimensional questions of positionality, the first workshop on Wednesday focused situating knowledge in theory: the lively discussion was inspired by readings from bell hooks, Gillian Rose, Veronika Siegel, and Anika Thym. This was followed by engaging with texts by Sumi Cho, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw and Leslie McCall, and Julia Roth which provided guidance in an exploration of intersectionality in methodology and research practice. On Wednesday evening, the roundtable, "Anti-Black Racism: Controlled Bodies, Monitored Mobility, and the Art of Intervention," featuring Vanessa Thompson, Claudia Wilopo, Mohomodou Houssouba, and Serena Dankwa (moderator) provided a more in-depth engagement. Its focus was on the systemic manifestations of anti-Black racism, its histories, trajectories and resistant strategies of policed and illegalised people in Switzerland (e.g. asylum seekers advocating for better Covid protection measures in camps; 3 Rosen Gegen Grenzen; Allianz gegen Racial Profiling). This roundtable was realized in cooperation with The Art of Intervention, the G3S, the Swiss Center for Social Research and the Kaserne Basel. On Thursday, the third workshop focused on decolonial writing strategies guided by the professional writing coach Darcy Alexandra. Drawing on various texts, f.e. by Gloria Anzaldúa the PhD students got to know different strategies of academic writing. Finally, the themes of situatedness and intersectionality in the research process were summarized in a synthesis. Thanks to the artistic documentation of Elke Renate Steiner we are now able to share two illustrated impressions of these days.