ABSTRACT
Social scientists have long been trained to distance ourselves from our research subjects in order to maintain a guise of objectivity, which glosses over the tensions and discomforts within our own research. However, since the 1970s, many post-structural, postcolonial, and feminist critics have argued that this distance masks the role of power in the production of particular kinds of subjects. Following the lead of these scholars, in this chapter, I attempt to critically reflect upon the tensions and moments of discomfort in my own journeys as a researcher who has continuously crossed various types of borders throughout my academic career working across the Indian-Pakistani border and as a woman of colour in the European academy. I discuss the nature of positionality, the politics of shifting locations, the binary between ‘the field’ and ‘home’, and the intellectual value of maintaining a sense of critical discomfort and self-reflexivity as a researcher.
