Autoethnography as a Feminist Method: Sensitising the Feminist I and Raising Oppositional Consciousness

• In Event: 372 - Regular Session. Feminist Research Methods

Abstract

This paper begins with the assumption that Autoethnography can be feminist research, writing, and method for making the personal political as well as exposing precarity. The paper is divided into 3 sections: 1) I will tell stories of Being 'a sexual pervert'; An old female body confronts a thyroid problem; Doing Research with drug using women and 'She wrote it but look what she wrote'; 2) I choose two stories to demonstrate how Autoethnography relates to the feminist slogan 'the personal is political'; 3) I choose the remaining two stories and make connections with the notion of precarity as a human condition in today's neo-liberal world. Finally, I will conclude that Autoethnography can help us to make the personal political as well as to raise oppositional consciousness in an awareness of the conditions that give rise to precarity .

Author

• Elizabeth Ettorre, University of Liverpool (Emeritus)