Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

graphy try to speak about what is silenced and absent, about what is squashed
in conventional research and emphasize that research is impacted by race, class,
sexuality and gender identities (Holman Jones et al., 2013b). Far from intending to
emphasize an individualistic perspective, auto-ethnography is about power,
culture and politics. “The irony of self-narratives is that they are of self but not
self alone.” (Chang, 2008: 33).
Sheer semantically auto-ethnography is about to understand cultural experience
(ethno) by describing and analysing (graphy) personal experience (auto) (Ellis et
al., 2011). If I pass over the infinite regressive inference in the next quote, autoethnography
is research “ … that enables researchers to use data from their own
life stories as situated in sociocultural contexts in order to gain understanding of
society through the unique lens of self.” (Chang et al., 2013: 18). Narratives are
widely used for this research. In these auto-ethnographic narratives the self and
society become connected in an evocative and academic way, acknowledging
that aesthetic, cognitive, emotional and relational aspects are involved in the
engagement with the research (Anderson and Glass-Coffin, 2013). Difference can
be made between an evocative, an interpretive, a critical and an analytical
auto-ethnographic accentuation (Anderson and Glass-Coffin, 2013; Chang et al.,
2013). These accentuations vary from impressionistic, emotionally engaging and
introspective accounts, towards rewriting and reinterpretation of personal life(s)
and deconstruction of one’s own societal allocation through discourses, and
interpreting personal life(s) in relation with existing concepts and theories.
The radically reflexive character of auto-ethnography can be observed in the
premises auto-ethnographic research departs from (Anderson and Glass-Coffin,
2013; Mingé, 2013; Tomasselli et al., 2013). Auto-ethnographic researchers postulate
that:
1 Our realities and knowledges are messy, complex and multiple;
2 These knowledges are our constructions from a particular point of view
within a particular context, therefore reflexivity is paramount and vulnerability
unquestionable;
3 Our experience of the world is sensory so our discourses should be sensory,
what we do is basic;
4 The construction of knowledge is rooted in local contexts and (inter)actions;
5 Every day we enact, change and create knowledge through mindful action
with impact on other people, engagement and multivocality are imperative;
6 To expand knowledge is to expand research methods is to expand ourselves,
final conclusions are rejected.
The premises of auto-ethnography point to an anti-foundational or post-modernistic
orientation on science. Within this perspective amongst others the discursive
power of language, the fragmentation of identities, a critique on the representationalism
of positivistic sciences, the loss in the belief in grand narratives or
general foundations and the acknowledgement of an inherent connection
between power and scientific truth - and thus provoking resistance to truths
claims - are emphasized (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000).
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