Specifically, I examine how to conduct research without representing Black bodies as a fixed, exoticised Other that is oppositional to a disembodied white Self. To do so, I use double consciousness alongside Black feminist work on dialogues as a methodological framework to centre Black Muslim women as knowledge producers. This novel approach moves away from simply describing (and fixing) racialised bodies to a particular performance/experience, and instead explores how performances shift as we negotiate different bodies, objects, and spaces. The paper advances discussions in critical race studies and the ethics of geographical research by illustrating how the situated experiences of the researcher and the participant are embedded in processes of knowledge production: I look to subvert the fixing of racialised bodies as deviations from the normative white background of academia. K E Y W O R D SBlack feminism, dialogue, double consciousness, normative whiteness, race and higher education, research ethics 1 | THE WHITE BACKGROUND OF ACADEMIA I feel most coloured when I am thrown against a sharp white background. … Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. (Hurston, 2000, p. 96) I've often thought about the above quote by Zora Neale Hurston in relation to how knowledge is produced within academic institutions: her words expose an ethical quandary with developing research about persons racialised as non-white against the "sharp white background" of academia.This paper responds to my ethical concerns with conducting research about racialised minorities within academic institutions that perpetuate normative whiteness. In doing so, the rest of this introduction outlines the "sharp white background" that I struggled with through my work on the clothing practices of Black Muslim women in Britain. Second, I examine how the racialised Other has been constructed as oppositional to whiteness. Following this, I extend work on double consciousness and dialogue by bringing these concepts together and using them as methodological tools to explore the relationship that Black Muslim women have to this (white) Self/(black) Other binary.My research with 21 Black Muslim women in Manchester and Sheffield (ages 18-51) arose from the dearth of work about our experiences (Johnson, 2019). Research on British Muslims focused primarily on Muslims with South Asian heritage (e.g., Brown, 2006;Phillips, 2015), while research about Black communities and religion focused on the role of Christianity and Black churches (e.g., Harris, 2006;Knowles, 2012). By centring Black Muslim women, I focused on how ---

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This article explores the role of comfort as an affective encounter across bodies, objects (namely clothing) and spaces. I focus on how bodies that are marked as strange and a source of society's discomfort negotiate this positioning through the presentation of one's body. What does it mean for these bodies to be comfortable or uncomfortable? This question is answered through work done with Black Muslim women in Britain. By exploring how comfort is felt in relation to racially marked bodies, this article develops work on emotional geographies. Comfort is understood as both an emotional product and process that changes as bodies move across different spaces. In noting this movement, I also explore how boundaries around the body (enacted through e.g. the multi-dimensional hijab) presents a particular form of territorialisation that facilitates comfort as we present our bodies across different spaces. These boundaries can be both a source of comfort and discomfort through their positioning as deviant from social norms. In understanding the different roles of boundaries, I explore the social processes that construct comfort (or discomfort) as we move through different spaces. This is intertwined with furthering work on Muslim geographies by challenging the overwhelming focus placed on 'public' facing garments like the headscarf and abaya. Such a focus limits an understanding of the fluidity of Black Muslim women's identities, and how these changes in our clothing practices affect and are affected by the relationships built across spaces.

Through this commentary, I hope to trouble the way Black feminists are called on to repeatedly remind predominantly white audiences that white women cannot inherently define the lives of all women.

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