Flesh and Bone: Memoir and Reflexivity

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: (Re)visiting Reflexivity: Positions, Relations, and Contexts (Table 6)

Abstract

Positionality statements are commonplace in qualitative research, presented as a way of demonstrating to the reader the relationship the researcher might have with the data. These statements, however, do little to truly interrogate a researcher’s social position in relation to their work. Nor do they offer the possibility of authorial presence. In this conceptual piece, the author tackles this dilemma by arguing for memoir as a potent tool of both methodological self-interrogation and a more honest representation of authorship. The author demonstrates this process with pieces of memoir interspersed throughout and centers on Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderland as a key point of reference and comparison.

Author

• Dallas J. Allen, University of Memphis