Priscyll Anctil

L’épistémologie féministe à l’épreuve d’un objet surinvesti. Enquêter auprès des femmes ex-combattantes dans le « post-accord de paix » colombien

Testing Feminist Epistemology with Over-invested Object. Investigating with Female Ex-Combatants in the midst of the Colombian « post-peace agreement »

Summary, in English

This article aims at questioning the uses of feminist epistemologies and methodologies in the context of a fieldwork project conducted in Colombia on the return to civilian life of female combatants. While the topic « female combatants »
tends to be the object of an academic over-investment, contributing to its depoliticization, the Authors discuss the various approaches, tools and methods produced by feminist epistemology that can be mobilized in order to avoid the reproduction of power relationships that can be established between researchers and participants, but also the competition between the researchers themselves. The article begins by analyzing the various factors that have contributed to the making of “female combatants” as an over-studied subject. It then describes the fieldwork that inspired our discussion and examines more particularly the challenges raised by a concrete application of feminist epistemology during the fieldwork. Third, it articulates proposals to develop feminist epistemology beyond gender issues by rethinking the multiple manners of organizing the different spatio-temporalities of the research process and the concrete connection with the territories of investigation.