Bodies and emotions in biomedical and sexuality fieldwork with HIV

Over more than 6 years, I have ethnographically researched heterosexual and homosexual serodiscordant experiences (couples where one member lives with and the other does not) in Mexico City. A key aspect of  my research was identifying the suitable methodological strategies to gather the testimonies of people affected by both HIV/AIDS and serodiscordancy. Since HIV/AIDS has been highly linked to stigma and discrimination, several NGOs and people in serodiscordant couples questioned my personal reason to research their lives. They also demanded from me clear statements about my investment in HIV/AIDS. They wanted to know what were my political and social commitments to their community, and to these topics. Participants' interpellations became a very relevant methodological interruption in my fieldwork and research practices; they drove me to reflexively analyze my approach and methodological strategies, and made me rethink both my place nd that of my informants in my investigation. I solved this dilemma by approaching Clínica Condesa, a renowned HIV/AIDS attention Clinic in Mexico City, with a new methodological strategy that took into account feminist epistemological frameworks, situated knowledge (in the way Donna Haraway proposed in 1995), and the co-production of ethnographic knowledge with my interlocutors. This feminist epistemological approach led me re-position myself in the field as another subject that has been shaped as a sexual risk subject due to my homoerotic experiences. Re-directing my research in this way contributed to developing a feminist performative ethnography that took as a starting point the affective encounters with more people to build my research and to re-construct, in a collective way, the testimonies of HIV and serodiscordant experiences in Mexico City.