Becoming ‘Unstuck’ Among Positionalities, Terms and Disciplines via Conversation (With Myself): Exploring Potentials for Affective Reflexivity in Critical Intersex Studies

This chapter highlights the importance of collective conversations regarding how to navigate the complexity of positions, roles, stakes, interests and feelings that most researchers experience. The author explores a conversational format as a way of writing about affective reflexivity. The chapter departs in a PhD project focusing on the lived experiences of variations of sex characteristics, in other contexts referred to as ‘intersex’ or as ‘disorders of sex development’ (DSD), and how discomfort led the author to focus on terminology per se. Reconstructing the process leading up to this demonstrates how insights from clinical psychology can be used to understand and develop research reflexivity. Finally, ideas on affective reflexivity are presented in a conversational manner, where models from psychotherapeutic practices are combined with interdisciplinary approaches to reflexivity. The perspectives utilized might help critical intersex scholars, and other researchers, become ‘unstuck’ in controversial matters. The chapter contributes to the body of methodological literature that juxtaposes clinical psychology with qualitative methodologies and aims to open up for other collective and interdisciplinary conversations where research positionalities and perspectives can be highlighted in constructive ways.