On a Dentist Chair: Colonial Patriarchal Violence and Everyday Forms of Sexual Harassment

Abstract

This article is a poetic narrative in the spirit of resistance. It is based on an experience of sexual harassment I had at a dentist’s office in Antigua, Guatemala while conducting ethnographic research. I share an autoethnography, which is analyzed through feminist and historical lenses to highlight how the colonial patriarchal system and its coloniality of power continue to provide fertile ground for everyday forms of sexual harassment in Guatemala. In addition, I explore how power relations are malleable, dynamic, and even unpredictable depending on the bodies we inhabit as researchers. This is an invitation to look within and expand our discussions about the implications of experiencing sexual harassment while conducting research whether we are “in” or “out” of the field. Acknowledging these complexities is crucial to our searches for decolonial practices within the field of ethnography and within the process of academic knowledge production.