Bodies that speak: examining the dialogues in research interactions

Although practicing reflexivity is accepted as an important ingredient in qualitative psychological research, it is frequently only engaged with to examine how researchers' perspectives affect research interactions, data collection and analyses. Typically, little attention is paid to how physical bodies affect research activities and participants. Drawing upon interview research with women who practise ‘bulimia’ and using feminist post-structuralism as a framework for conceptualizing the body as simultaneously material/textual, this article examines how the bodies of participants and researchers are thoroughly implicated in research processes via reciprocal intersubjective exchanges. This paper explores the opportunities offered by adopting embodied reflexive practice and, despite the challenges it poses, concludes that this has much to offer (critical) qualitative psychologists. Embodied reflexivity can be deployed to interrogate ethical commitments, guide research discussions, enrich analyses, provide an adjunct corpus of reflexivity data, and contribute to the development of theories of embodied subjectivity.