ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the background of the book, my previous involvement in QTPOC activist networks and critical psychological training, and how this has shaped my orientation towards the research. I critique traditional psychological approaches to the subject and understandings of ‘fixed’ identities and argue for a critical psychological approach which considers fluidity, nuance, and complexities of subjectivity and identity as ‘always on the way’. I consider the tensions of writing about subjectivity and identity as an ongoing process, and the ways in which academic work can flatten out the richness and complexities of these processes. Following Gordon’s critique of ‘disciplinary decadence’ I draw critical theory – anti-/post-colonial, Black feminist, and queer theory – into the book to challenge psychology’s limits and failure to understand coloniality, and of ‘the intersecting social [political, historical] and psychic manoeuvres in the process of subject formation’. I further utilise this critical theory to disrupt and intervene on phenomenological method and analysis, drawing on Fanon and Ahmed’s critiques and present a novel ‘queerly raced’ phenomenological analytic framework. I reflect on this phenomenological method as a form of intimate dialogical encounter with my participants, and the role of ‘feeling one’s way’ as part of a Black queer feminist methodology and ontology.
