Autoethnography as Practice and Process: Toward an Honest Appraisal?

Abstract

In this article, I attempt a contribution to “honest conversations” about the writing practices and processes of autoethnographers. My attempt may or may not be useful to those who judge their own autoethnographic writing as messy or even embarrassing.

Autoethnographers as Freedom-Writers?

“…Nevertheless, Ferrante maintains that she has “given in to the urge to scribble” (Ferrante, 2022, p. 91). So have I (see Badley, 2022a). Ferrante’s phrase “giving shape” resonates with Rushdie’s determination as freedom-fighter not only to place himself in danger but also as freedom-writer to help re-shape the world .…”

“…For a time, she accepted the image of being a caged beast (after Beckett), the cage providing secure boundaries which calmed her into feeling she was protected within a safe perimeter. However, she now sees herself as spinning, relatively comfortably, in a whirlpool of fragment-words-a frantumaglia (see Ferrante, 2022, p. 37, andBadley, 2022a). Ferrante (2022) now believes that beneath the need for order is an enduring energy that will stumble, disarrange, delude, mistake, fail, soil .…”

Scribbling Toward Utopia

“…We scribble for ourselves Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan (2022) Kathleen's found poem was written after reading Autoethnography as Practice and Process: An Honest Appraisal? (Badley, 2023a). She summarizes my scribbling toward a democratic and egalitarian utopia, a desired future where we scribble for ourselves and scribe for others as we create and re-create, through continuing human conversations, new and better possible worlds.…”