Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

Auto-ethnography
Auto-ethnography is already a longstanding tradition – the term was coined in 1979
– in which research from a reflexive and rather ‘personal’ perspective is done and in
due course is being legitimized within the broader scientific community. Auto-ethnography
is a rather eclectic research praxis (Learmonth and Humphreys, 2012). I will
elaborate on what auto-ethnography is about and stipulate some differences within
this approach. With this introduction of auto-ethnography I also intend to introduce
auto-ethnography in the Dutch scientific community, which to my knowledge, for a
larger part is unfamiliar with this way of doing research.
Textbox 6: An excursion on auto-ethnography
Given the amount of recently published overviews of auto-ethnographic research
(Boylorn and Orbe, 2014a; Chang et al., 2013; Denzin, 2014; Holman Jones
et al., 2013a) auto-ethnography is really coming of age.
Auto-ethnography is radically reflexive. Reflexive narratives are written about
for instance the experience of abortion, mourning, depression, divorce, racism,
finding oneself in a minority position, cultural and gender identities, and the
whereabouts of working in public relations or science, or of being subjected to
crime and healthcare. As an example I recapitulate a narrative about the way a
recently appointed member of staff of a university was excluded by his colleagues.
“They didn’t need to know him; they just disliked him. His different views of the
subject, his brash dismissal of long-standing departmental texts, his absence at
staff evening “bonding” sessions, his challenging of time-honored pedagogical
practices, his keeping himself to himself, his refusal to wear the standard issue
shirt, his outsider-ness.” (Jones, 2011: 631) is the introduction on a narrative is
which the author makes transparent why a recently appointed member of staff
resigns. After being criticized and isolated in meetings, in being ignored in the
canteen and being judged as a danger to established hegemony this member of
staff resigns from one day to the next. According to the author this exclusion is
not to be reduced to the acts of one person, the management or some specific
causes. This exclusion evolves in a process of weeks in which some colleagues
criticize or ignore the member of staff and in which some ignore the possibility
to support their colleague. The auto-ethnographic narrative is a description
from within of a micro-political process which has a not-managed but apparently
desired outcome. At various moments the author wonders about her own
contributions to this process of exclusion and what she might or needed to have
done to stop this process. “Exclusion” appears to be something which is enacted
and not an abstract social mechanism.
This narrative exemplifies that auto-ethnography is radical because it turns the
reflexive act upon the researcher self to deconstruct his or her constructions of
reality (Cunliffe, 2003). Researchers who identify themselves with auto-ethno-
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