Audrey Higelin-Cruz
Université Paris Nanterre, Sophiapol (audreyhigelin@yahoo.fr; ORCID: 0009-0005- 2974-3523).
Expressing the pain of absence: Reflective issues raised by a survey on the intimate and sexual lives of prisoners’ partners conducted during the pandemic
Abstract: This article is based on a qualitative study on the intimate and sexual lives of partners of incarcerated individuals within heterosexual couples, conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. It aims to explore the reflexive challenges involved in gathering material related to a type of suffering that affects the couple – a social relationship of a particular nature, as it falls within the realm of intimacy and emotion. The article first examines the conditions under which fieldwork and data collection were negotiated in the specific context of the pandemic. The health crisis and successive lockdowns forced the researcher to adopt methods involving physical distance from the study population, creating a form of symmetry between the researcher and participants in terms of social deprivation. These constraints had an impact on the research relationship, especially given the need to establish a bond of trust capable of supporting a longitudinal follow-up of participants over several years. As the fieldwork was gendered – a cisgender heterosexual woman studying a target population of women who identify as cisgender heterosexual – the article then turns to exploring the role of sexuality in the research relationship, using a case study involving a participant followed for over two years. To do so, the interactionist approach serves as the primary analytical framework. Furthermore, by addressing issues of gender and sexuality in/of the research process, the analyses also draw on the epistemology of “situated knowledge.” The nature of the research topic also invites, within the same reflexive dynamic, an engagement with feminist epistemologies and “standpoint theory”.
Keywords: Prison; Sexuality; Intimacy; Reflexivity; Couple.