Oxford English Dictionary-
Auto- repr. Gr.
- ‘self, one’s own, by oneself, independent-ly,’ combining form of 
self. Exceedingly common in Gr.; in L. only in a few words adopted from Gr. without analysis, as autochthones, autographus, automatus; more common in med.L.; and largely used in the mod. langs. In Eng., to a certain extent, a living element, prefixable to scientific terms denoting action or operation, whence occasionally to others, in combinations that are more or less nonce-words. In free composition as a prefix element, its chief meanings are: (a) of oneself, one’s own; self-; (b) self-produced or -induced (pathologically) within the body or organism; (c) spontaneous, self-acting, automatic (cf. esp. b below).
Ethnography- The scientific description of nations or races of men, with their customs, habits, and points of difference.
I opened this article wondering what autoethnography really means. My colloquial understanding suggested that an enthography is a study of a certain people and culture at a given time and that auto would make this study self reflexive at first and then broadened beyond oneself. This felt like a contradiction. Is it an academic diary? Are there principles to this form that allow people to understand each other ’cause I will have a very difficult time understanding a 40 year old female academic as my personal experience and emotional history will have been drastically different. Are they asking for empathetic understanding in the form of academy? Wasn’t sure. I decided to consult the OED for a lil guidance before I started. To my dismay, autoethnography is not yet recognized as an English word so I took the definitions for ethnography and auto- which left me with the same earlier speculations. Decided to record my feeling as I went- see how that played.
Didn’t care for the beginning because it took a very long time to make a quick point. Gonna show not tell. Check. The quote “we can ask why authors aren’t encouraged to write academic articles in the first person” troubled me for a couple reasons: (1) why do I explicitly care about first person perspective, (2) Derrida would suggest you are “always already” writing a personal narrative, and (3) why write more personal academics instead of writing more academic personal narratives?
As I read on, I was troubled to discover the authors using Barthes, Baktin, Derrida, and Foucault to justify the personal approach. Each troubling for their own reason- not the least of which being that while Barthes’ Camera Lucida is interesting philosophically (and maybe a lil suspect academically)- it is painfully boring to read because his first person perspective requires that he qualify everything- even more than usual. Sometimes loses itself in the need to explain itself. What this Barthes thought told me was- I’m going to have to be explicit about my point of view so I don’t have to qualify.
Next troubling quote: “we need a form that will allow readers to feel the moral dilemmas, think with our story instead of about it, join actively in the decision points that define an autoethnography project, and consider how their own lives can be made a story worth telling.” Bullshit. I was slightly heartened by the beginning… voicing a need to have a form that will make this autoethnography translateable- however vast I thought that project might be… But the “story worth telling” line, their mindset is a toss up: kindergarten, two pot smoking kids just discovering Kerouac, a Tony Robbins event, or just a screenwriting workshop.
I start “Introduction to Autoethnography” and feel completely condescended to. Don’t do that. Do you think you’re breaking some new fuckin’ ground here? I can’t get through it. I skip to the next section. I wonder whether Jason will be annoyed by this-
Hayano, credited with originating the term autoethnography, “limited the term to cultural-level by anthropologists of their “own people,” in which the researcher is a full insider by virtue of being “native,” acquiring an intimate familiarity with the group, or achieving full membership in the group being studied.” This presumes a lot about culture. Geography. What is a group? How does one gain entrance to or exit from a group. Tons of tall red-headed white dudes that I wouldn’t be able to acquire initimate familiarity on these facts while there are tons of short black women that I can. No sexual intention there- point being this approach is starting to feel exceptionally naive. This quote is followed by a series of… got distracted for a while by a political argument about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac- not that great- but this person was claiming- wait, maybe not relevant… references that are highly academic in intention but not synthesized or qualified. How many people know these names? Are the authors so egocentric as to just name drop without anything else?
Arrogance is now engaged. Reflexive ethnographies as greater insight into other cultures? Fanon is kinda over, eh? Edward Said just flinched in his grave. As I move along, just too many references to be effective. Focus. Or are you letting out some truth about your cognition?
“Personal writing akin to evocative narrative has recently proliferated in the mainstream press, in New Journalism, in creative non-fiction, and in genres of literary memoir, autobiography, and autopathology seem to have turned toward more more intimate, personal, and self-conscious.” Well some people like shit sex, doesn’t mean it is going to work for you… or your purposes. Seriously, what box have they been hiding in? New Journalism? The form is based on personal experience. Hence the new genre- New Journalism, not journalism that has evolved into something completely different. All of these genres’ stated purpose is to do what these authors seem to want to do. Are they hung up on needing it to be under the sub-text of anthropology? Are we somewhere between academic snobbery and childish indigence? Do they need their peers approval? Cause if so then they are missing the point of the genres they are trying to appropriate.
The now try to answer some questions. First, “To what kind of truth do these stories aspire?” I sense that they should have this answer in postmodernism but don’t give that one. Then they start talking about the belittled therapeutic qualities of personal academic writing and I can no longer take them seriously… at all. I skim through the conference- am pained by more of the writing… am realizing I have to write my own autoethnography about sexual escapism in SL. Of course, I’ve been writing an autoethnography all this time but I have questioned whether I should discuss it in writing. Also, will Jason accept it as my ethnography cause I have class in two hours? Truth is I’d like to know if my criticisms of the weakness on this form were shown more then told? That was my intention. I wonder if that is clear? My direct questioning is generally directed at the authors personal assessments but I also attempted to poke holes in the form as being useless academically. My intention anyway… does it play?
October 3, 2008 at 3:23 am
Chester- You are good at short responses. I, am not. Please excuse the length here. Lets continue the debate in class tomorrow, eh??
Ay Chester, maybe we don’t agree. Actually maybe we are so far on opposite ends of the spectrum that it’s hard to even qualify why we don’t agree, how we don’t agree. I find so much academic merit in this writing. I have learned so much from writers who write in this style, though they may not call it auto-ethnography- mostly feminist whose work I simply revere, whose work grows out of embodied experience. I wish you had been in class last week for that discussion on Hayles and embodied experience, because I feel like with that very solid basis for embodied knowledge, we might at least be able to disagree with similar language, or by thinking forward from that place….
As for your comment on Barthes- I love Camera Lucida, I find it one of the most beautifully written books I have read and I find the ideas about punctus and studium (was that what they were called?) to be deeply intertwined in my praxis as educator, feminist, scholar, learner. Must it not be intertwined with the personal in order for it to serve as knowledge, and in order for ideas to open up new ways of thinking???? What is wrong with qualifying? Perhaps there are ways of understanding that cannot be made clear through explicitly that are more wrapped up in phenomenology and epistemology? Why cannot the lines between art, literature, and science, thought be blurred? I thought you would have liked Hayles very abstract and almost mathematical way of explaining things because it is not at all personal or written though personal narrative, but so clearly explains and validates personal narrative/auto ethnography/writing from embodied experience in the pursuit of all kinds of knowledge….
You are troubled by the quote,
“We need a form that will allow readers to feel the moral dilemmas, think with our story instead of about it, join actively in the decision points that define an auto ethnography project, and consider how their own lives can be made a story worth telling.”
I agree with her- we do need in academia to come up with a form that allows readers- often other academics- to think with our story. To think through our story. To have a pedagogy THOUGH story. To say it is bullshit is to privilege a certain kind of “academic” knowing (that is tied up in what bell hooks calls “racist capitalist sexist patriarchy”) over knowledge is embodied. Because the “academic thought” you refer to is rooted in Western, male, white, literate, linear processes to validate the cerebral (the white, western, wealth, male cerebral thought, that is) is to say one kind of embodied experience is more valid than the others, is to perpetuate relations of power that have kept the people of the world locked in oppressive practices.
And briefly I want to comment on your crit of Hayano. Yes- this presumes a lot about culture. It also presumes- a presumption I think the authors, Hayles, hooks, and many others would agree with- that embodied experience is shaped by the way our bodies are perceived in this world, by the way structures of power are erected in order to privilege certain kinds of bodies over other kinds of bodies. So while you may relate to a black short woman better than you relate to a tall redheaded man, your relationships grow out of your embodied experience, which is shaped by your red hair, height, maleness, whiteness, etc. You are able to access structures of power differently than a short black woman is. That’s not to say that you may not relate best to a short black woman- you may have a deep relationships. But the way you move throughout the world is deeply different, because of the way you experience the world based on embodied experience. She, as a black woman, deals with fears you may never have felt, fears as well as powers related to her womanness and blackness that you simply cannot embody.
As a result, her writing and knowing will be radically different than yours. To try to squeeze it into cerebral, philosophical, disembodied western thought will not work. And so, we need storytelling.
People have told stories for much longer than the university has been in existence. That knowledge was academic, I would say.
Cheers to storytelling, to constructing power through relationship building in storytelling, to networking to release knowledge, to building safe spaces in which knowledge can be produced.
October 3, 2008 at 5:07 pm
i’m enjoying this debate — I think you two have pinpointed a difficult issue to “work out” — one thing I hope we can do in this course is find ‘solid ground’ for legitimating (within the dominant fields of discourse in the academy) ‘experimental’ or ‘non-traditional’ approaches to culture and ethnography. Debates like these help raise the foundational issues that are at stake when a break with tradition is proposed.