Epistemic translation: towards an affective methodology of navigating intimacies, reflexivity and moments of untranslatability

Abstract

This article contributes to the scholarship on queer migration by exploring the translation of knowledge as a concept and process whereby social, cultural and epistemic histories and structures are negotiated. Drawing on my own experiences of engaging in ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews with queer asylum seekers in Denmark, I reflect on ways of translating knowledge by focusing on the epistemological, methodological and affective dimensions of research relations. By reflecting on my own position as an epistemological translator, I follow the ways in which affective intimacies emerge in embodied encounters and how these intimacies are constrained and made possible by institutional norms, bodies and spaces. My central argument, drawing on autoethnography, affect theories and decolonial perspectives, suggests epistemic translation as a method of navigating affective intimacies and encounters in research relations. This approach may support a critical reflection of differing positionalities and moments of untranslatability within knowledge production.