Autoethnographical Research as a Space for Self-Situating, Relationality, Knowledge-Building, and Epiphanies

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Political and Emotion(al) Inquiry

Abstract

The author examines a personal account, as revealed through her performance autoethnography, to identify intended and unintended consequences of this approach. Original purposes of performance/interpretive autoethnography lie in being a critical and creative practice, giving voice/access to certain aspects of culture and communication. This autoethnography embraces these purposes, while seeking pathways into: 1) subjective history, as it plays out during particular politico-cultural times and spaces; 2) human expression, as embodied in memory and experience; and 3) dialogue, to build new knowledge between the author and the reader. Drawing across methodologies along the qualitative research continuum, the author finds that through history, human expression, dialogue, and epiphanies along the way, the following are possible: situating the self, relationality, and knowledge-building.

Author

• Jody Dlouhy-Nelson, University of British Columbia - Okanagan