Shadowboxing the Field: A Black Queer Feminist Praise Song

Abstract

This article situates random public encounters in fieldwork as critical ethnographic “shadowboxing” (James 1999) moments shaping Black queer feminisms for anthropology. Based in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, I explore the multiangular effects of an impromptu encounter with a gynecologist within the context of the International Women's Day march in 2013. This article maps how my Black queer feminist lens renders visible the rooted mechanisms of power and subsequent erasures of Black women's agency in silence and social action. I rethink how discovery and evidence emerge as “radical data” to frame how Black female bodies become shadows within institutional spaces. It challenges us to boldly call out the radical data that resides beyond the data itself. I engage the scholarship of Black queer and Black feminist scholars as a call for more Black queer feminist praise songs.