Advances in Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry

Reflections on the Legacy of Carolyn Ellis and Arthur Bochner

Tony E. Adams, Robin M. Boylorn, Lisa M. Tillmann, Tony E. Adams, Robin M. Boylorn, Lisa M. Tillmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000372946
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Advances in Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry pays homage to two prominent scholars, Arthur Bochner and Carolyn Ellis, for their formative and formidable contributions to autoethnography, personal narrative, and alternative forms of scholarship.

Their autoethnographic—and life—project gives us tools for understanding shared humanity and precious diversity; for striving to become ever-more empathic, loving, and ethical; and for living our best creative, relational, and public lives. The collection is organized into two sections: "Foundations" and "Futures." Contributors to "Foundations" explore Carolyn and Art's scholarship and legacy and/or their singular presence in the author's life. Contributors to "Futures" offer novel and innovative applications of autoethnographic and narrative inquiry. Throughout, contributors demonstrate how Bochner's and Ellis' work has created and shifted the terrain of autoethnographic and narrative research.

This collection will be of interest to researchers familiar with Bochner's and Ellis' research. It also serves as a resource for graduate students, scholars, and professionals who have an interest in autoethnographic and narrative research. This collection can be used in upper-division undergraduate courses and graduate courses solely about autoethnography and narrative, and as a secondary text for courses about ethnography and qualitative research.

1

Righting and writing (for) our lives

Turning inward when the world falls apart

Tony E. Adams, Robin M. Boylorn, and Lisa M. Tillmann

In the final song of the Broadway musical, Hamilton (Miranda & McCarter, 2016), Eliza ponders what her husband, Alexander, could have done had he lived longer: “He acted and wrote as if running out of time.” She invites us to think about who will tell our stories after we are gone and whose stories remain untold or shrouded in secrecy.

As editors, we approached this collection of stories and essays in a spirit resonant of Eliza’s meditation on time and absence, which we see as akin to the calling of autoethnography. We pay tribute to Carolyn Ellis and Arthur Bochner (Art and Carolyn)—our friends, mentors, and writers with whom we have bonded as family over many years. They too have written as if running out of time, while providing us the guidance, tools, and inspiration to write our own stories about the people, things, ideas, and issues we care about before time runs out.

We write—and invite you to write—as if running out of time as well, because on many fronts our world feels wounded and haunted by rampant individualism and authoritarianism; predatory capitalism and widening economic inequality; and systemic and intractable racism, sexism, xenophobia, transphobia, ableism, ageism, and religious-centrism. COVID-19 has brought into focus the many ways in which the most vulnerable populations among us are punished and endangered by economic, social, and healthcare inequality.

As (auto)ethnographers, we feel called to turn outward, looking to others in society, then inward to reflect, understand, and figure out what to say, write, and do. In no year has this felt more urgent than 2020. Under quarantine, stay-at-home orders, social distancing guidelines, and travel restrictions, our project of documenting life and crafting narratives has helped us to process uncertainty, anxiety, fear, and grief; to preserve old connections and forge new ones; and to organize politically and spiritually. Storying this moment has helped demonstrate that hashtags, petitions, and posts can move beyond “slacktivism” and promote consciousness-raising, community-building, and power-holder accountability, driving even vulnerable and at-risk physical bodies into the streets.

We write to navigate, record, and challenge these turbulent times.

We write through terror and towards a shared and just security.

We write knowing we won’t always be here—but perhaps our stories will.

***

“Writing Lives.” Carolyn and Art both taught a class by this title at the University of South Florida, where each of us received our PhD. They later adopted this title for their Routledge book series. As autoethnographers, we mobilize their phrase to ask: what does it mean to write (for our) lives, to live writing lives, and to make lives live on the page?

Autoethnographers mindfully mine the past, attend to the present, and chart paths toward more humane and just futures. As composers of autoethnography, we sometimes follow closely the footsteps of our autoethnographic ancestors, including Art and Carolyn; at other times, we blaze new trails of critical and creative engagement. We use texts to promote empathy, to live more meaningful and fulfilling lives, to become better versions of ourselves, and to transform unjust structures. As readers of autoethnography, we listen and bear witness to others’ stories, seeking advice and comfort in times of distress.

In this introduction, we describe how we write for our lives, how we maneuver in/through the intersections of personal experience, relationships, and social problems. We demonstrate such maneuvering by understanding autoethnography from the perspectives of the “micro” (personal), “meso” (relational), and “macro” (structural). A micro analysis asks: how does the practice and composition of autoethnography affect us individually—bodily, emotionally, psychologically, existentially? At the meso level, we ponder: how might autoethnography affect our immediate spheres of influence—our relations with family, friends, coworkers, and community members? A macro view considers: how can analysis of systems of power and inequality affect our autoethnographic practices, and how might autoethnographic practices sharpen our and others’ ability to engage in such analysis and mobilize for change? We use these perspectives to provide an overview of Carolyn and Art’s work and offer a preview to this collection.

The micro of autoethnography

At the micro (personal) level, autoethnography invites identity work: who am I; how did I become this variant of myself; how might I become more compassionate, understanding, and engaged; what social locations do I occupy, and how do those foster, shape, and constrain my opportunities and challenges? By centering the intrapersonal, autoethnography cultivates the introspection, sensitivity, and reflexivity needed to write our way through difficult experiences, moving from frustration, pain, and grief toward meaning, fulfillment, and hope. Autoethnographers reframe and re-story experiences in ways that leverage positionality and can build agency and empowerment.

Autoethnography can help us make sense and meaning of both mundane and extraordinary lived experiences, including trauma. For example, we have written about mental illness (Boylorn, 2014), same-sex attraction (Berry, Gillotti, & Adams, 2020), and eating disorders (Tillmann-Healy, 1996; Tillmann, 2009) to make visible, normalize, and destigmatize experiences often shrouded in shame. We find the therapeutic effect of autoethnography to be one of the method’s greatest strengths, especially during uncertain, fearful, and devastating times.

When effective, autoethnography unlocks and expands emotional and empathic capacity. We look deeply within and feel deeply for ourselves so that we also might feel for and with others. Autoethnographers share micro-experiences—secrets, epiphanies, traumas—to encourage others to consider, listen, and respond. We say,

This happened to me. This is how I—in this place, at this time—make sense of what took place. This is how power, privilege, marginalization, inequality, and oppression operate on/in/alongside me in these particular contexts. As a result of this exploration, this is how I might live differently.

Autoethnographers tend not to instruct, “This is how you should generalize from the events portrayed.” Instead, we invite readers to ask, “How does the author’s experience resonate—or not—with my own? What might I learn about myself, others, and the social world from such resonances and disjunctures?”

Autoethnography recognizes singularity and particularity as situated in cultural, social, and political contexts. It centralizes auto (self) and involves creative composition (graph). Systematic engagement with culture (ethnos) distinguishes autoethnography from autobiography.

Personal narratives that fail to stretch beyond one’s inner life and cultural analyses unmoored from lived experience are not autoethnographies. We resist the neoliberal urge to individualize and privatize social problems, while remaining mindful that social problems impact actual bodies and beings.

The meso of autoethnography

Though an autoethnographer often introspects and composes alone, there is no truly “lone” autoethnographer. One may examine and write through a personal epiphany (Denzin, 2014), but all lived experience is situated within relationships and systems. When we attend the meso of autoethnography, we focus on relational patterns of personal experience—encounters, reactions, and interactions that happen repeatedly—and our close connections with friends, families, workplaces, and face-to-face and virtual communities.

For example, a meso approach to understanding and navigating this historical moment, one shaped profoundly by COVID-19, could explore our fear that beloved ones will contract the virus, suffer, and die alone. Each of us struggles to manage the anxiety and loneliness of being unable to share space with family, close friends, and students. The pandemic infuses the global community (macro) but is lived and felt most acutely as it impacts particular bodies (micro) and relationships (meso).

This moment also draws attention to individual and systemic racism in the United States, exemplified by the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless other Black people. Our analysis of systemic racism might begin with the micro, focusing on one person, one body, one life cruelly extinguished; we say the person’s name (#SayTheirNames) and demand the killer and accomplices be held accountable. We move to the meso when considering how that person’s death affects families, organizations, and local communities. Although the three of us did not know Breonna Taylor or George Floyd personally, their deaths reverberate through our relationships. One of us watched his White mother and her White best friend acquire “conceal and carry” licenses granting them the ability to possess a loaded gun in public; the two women fear not police brutality but those protesting it. For us, their guns symbolize not freedom and safety but racism and danger. In a conversation with Trump-voting Republican family members, another of us was asked sincerely, “What do they mean when they say, ‘Racism is a systemic problem’?” This prompted what felt like a productive discussion. As a Black woman, still another of us fears for her own life and those of her family members. She listened in rage and sadness as her cousin recounted being targeted by emboldened White supremacists. They followed her on the highway, attempted to run her off the road, and threw bricks and debris at her car, causing costly damage. In terror, she waited on the side of the road for the authorities, not knowing whom to fear most: the White supremacists or the police.

The macro of autoethnography

As indicated, the identity (auto, micro) and relational (meso) aspects and implications of autoethnography bear recursive relationships to the macro (ethnos). The macro level draws our attention to canonical narratives and institutional forces. We argue that autoethnography—as a method, mode of representation, and way of life—already advances a collective consciousness and can, if mobilized effectively, make broader and deeper contributions to social change and justice.

As we write (August 2020), COVID-19 and police violence dominate the news cycle. The pandemic has laid bare long-standing structural and intersecting inequities (e.g., racism and poverty) related to the environment, water...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• 1. Righting and writing (for) our lives: Turning inward when the world falls apart
• PART I Foundations
• PART II Futures
• Index