Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, 2026, 10(2), Article No. 27
Link to Open Access peer-reviewed journal article https://doi.org/10.20897/femenc/19075
Co written with Dr Elahe Karimnia, this paper introduces the tentacular-feminine-body as an embodied methodology for exploring archives as relational constituted in the encounters between citizen and city. Rooted in Black/endarkened feminist thought and developed through an interdisciplinary research partnership in dance and urban studies, tentacular-feminine-body resists hegemonic framings of place-making that erase or distort marginalized perspectives. Rather than treating archive as a static repository, we conceive of it as a living process of sensation, memory, and encounter, in which the city is forever entangled with the bodies that move through it and the grammars that shape it. Drawing on dance choreographic practices as a tool of sensorial and situated inquiry, we position the tentacular-feminine-body as a threshold through which research questions arise. Our findings articulate three areas of inquiry: the grammar of the city, the feminine of the city, and the city archivist. By emphasizing dynamism, plurality, and interconnectedness, we suggest that the tentacular-feminine-body provides a methodology through which design can be informed by collaborative, relational archives of citizen–city life