The First Disciple: A Generative Autobiographical Performance from an Ethnographic Field

• In Event: Ethnography Division Top Paper Panel

Abstract

The essay that follows has encased within it two performances. The first performance, The First Disciple, with which I begin this text, is a generative autobiography and a short memoir staged before an audience in a middle American college. The second performance, Visiting Mother in Other Secrets, is a narratively dramatized and textually performed collection of ethnographic conversations, reflections, field notes, and recollections which took shape and form as I was immersed in a life-history study of urban North Indian women’s experiences in Hindu arranged marriages in New Delhi, India. Performed in a style that integrates it with The First Disciple, the second performance shows the emergence of the staged. I present these performances in a non-linear chronology in order to unravel the ‘how’s’ of generative autobiography – a genre that emerges as audiences become practical collaborators in audiencing autobiographical performance (Alexander, 2000). I do this by showing how The First Disciple took concrete root in my ‘performative reflexivity’ during fieldwork. I discuss such a reflexivity in light of some key features of generative autobiographical performance which, as I show, may occur as one audiences and partakes in ethnographic field narratives. My goal and hope is to expand the locale/s of generative autobiography, and enhance our understanding of performitivity and field work.

Author

• Devika Chawla, Ohio University