“Responding to the Panel ‘Risky Business, Uncertain Futures . . . and (How) the Work Continues’ in Qualitative Inquiry”

In this short critical performative and poetic response to the 2025 Autoethnography Special Interest Group (SIG) session at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), the author draws meaning and value from the offerings of four presenters. The author narrates the importance of the panel to both the theme of the SIG and the overall ICQI, further building a theory on the resonance of audience response in autoethnographic performance as activist affect. The author concludes by linking the notion of risky business and uncertain futures in the theme of the SIG—to the 2025 immigration and deportation raids in the city of Los Angeles, CA authorized by President Donald J. Trump.