Is this a positionality statement?

No.

And this is the short answer.

I just concluded a chapter about the concept of positionality, its limitations and how these limitations could be explored and overcome by Afro-pindorâmico knowledge, in that case, Travesti theory.

I will not repeat the chapter here, as this space is to deposit all the universe of thoughts that did not fit in my dissertation. Here I want to talk about my positionality and how my inability to state it clearly led me to value my origins and the certainty that I will never be fully capable of positioning myself in a solid place.

In my chapter, I explored this idea that undefinition can be a positive feature in research. Liminality is the concept that helped me to see myself as an undefined researcher or as a threshold person– to use the terms the author, Victor Turner (1982), used. But, to be sincere, these denominations are not close enough to my research and my epistemological universe, so I found in Anzaldúa (1987) the real term to talk about my positionality: encruzilhada.

Reading Anzaldúa and Luiz Rufino (2019), I understood the encruzilhada as an important epistemological place. For Rufino, the encruzilhada is not made of two roads; it is made of three. This makes the encruzilhada a non-binary place of knowledge that can shape positionality. But the most important insight is that Anzaldúa affirmed that, after you start to inhabit the encruzilhada, you become it. Positionality is not where you stand; it is who you are.

After exploring this position as an encruzilhada being, I understood that this symbolic place is not apart from me. As much as I understand that my part in this PhD research will never be entirely clear, I start to feel this lack of weight in my body, as if an anchor had been lifted. In becoming the encruzilhada, I become my research. I embody the findings; I experiment with my body. I visit the dreaming with my whole self. I enter the ayahuasca transe with open arms, and I become my research. The pressure I felt when I started writing this chapter gradually faded, giving way to a sense of hope and a rediscovery of something I had been losing: my ability to remain indefinitely undefined.

I move as an undefined researcher, part in Brazil, part in Canada. I move as someone privileged and oppressed by the same colonial system. I move as someone who can contain all genders and perform them perfectly, and someone trying to escape them. Because of that, I could be seen as someone who will never belong to any normativity (either inside or outside).  Contrary to that, academia has me. Has my body, my soul, my brain. Dictates my availability for life and joy and also establishes my financial viability. But my academic presence is also volatile. Academia has been deceived by terreiros[1], Ayahuasca centers and by the power to escape to dream.

I am part linked to all the academic requirements and part free in an undefined space where I will search for the knowledge I desire. I escape definition by fostering my tolerance for ambiguity, instability, and wonder. This is my method: push forward to see where this delicate fabric between establishment and disruption will break. I hope it can sustain this dissertation at least for one more chapter.

[1] African-Brazilian Temples where rituals take place.