Titre

4.1.2 Collective Writing Session: Writing and Describing Body and Intimacy

Description

The collective writing session is embedded within WP4 and is specifically connected to the thematic focus of Task 4.1.1 Health, gender, and sexuality. It touches on sensitive topics that raise questions for researchers about access to the field and, more broadly, how subjects related to the body, intimacy, vulnerability, and sexuality can be represented.

In this workshop, we will explore the limitations and challenges encountered in writing about the body, particularly with regard to issues of sexuality, intimacy, and private choices that elude verbal expression and resist observation. This involves confronting three dimensions—materiality, intimacy, and ethics—that impose constraints on ethnographic description and prompt us to think critically about our research practices.

This will involve examining the ethical and legal issues related to both the collection of statements about the body, illness, and sexuality and the restitution of these statements. It will also involve reflecting on the vocabulary used to describe the inexpressible (sensations, intimacy, etc.); the tension between language that objectifies and subjective bodily experience; and the risks of stigmatization or, conversely, political and ideological reappropriation linked to the verbalization of bodily states.


This programme will take place exclusively in Italy during the summer of 2028, hosted by the Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale.

Programme leaders: Nicoletta Diasio, University of Strasbourg – LinCS (UNISTRA) and Francesca Zaltron, University of Eastern Piedmont – LabSIA (UPO)

Università degli Studi del Piemonte Oriental