Conceptualizing Autoethnography as Assemblage: Accounts of Occupational Therapy Practice

Abstract

Drawing on theoretical work within ethnography and poststructuralism, this article discusses a conceptualization of autoethnography as assemblage. The concept of assemblage includes but goes beyond the literal bringing together of a range of heterogeneous elements in different modalities to offer different perspectives on a phenomenon. It challenges and displaces boundaries between the individual and the social through a focus on practice, which offers a new ontology of the social. These ideas are illustrated through excerpts from an autoethnographic study of an occupational therapist working with young people in a Sydney children's hospital in the mid-1980s. The article makes visible a material, relational, and affective landscape of remembered practice. Through successive displacements of the self as the primary site of experience and meaning, we seek to contribute new understandings about the potential for autoethnography to engage with professional practice as a space of multiplicity.

Doing ‘dangerous’ autoethnography on Islamophobic victimization

“…Typically, autoethnography ranges from studies in which the researcher's experiences are explored alongside those of the participants, through to stories in which the researcher's experiences become the actual focus of investigation (Ellis and Bochner, 2000). Denshire and Lee (2013) observe there are two main strands of autoethnography, 'evocative' and 'analytic' autoethnography. The evocative (also called 'emotive') approach foregrounds the researcher's personal stories.…”

“…This binary classification is useful as an initial way of making visible the variation in how autoethnographic writers integrate the strands of self and culture in their writing (Denshire and Lee, 2013). Correspondingly, the two independent research projects subscribe to the analytic approach, using our personal experiences as empirical data in order to gain insight into the role of Muslims' visible religious identity in 'triggering' Islamophobia in public spaces.…”

Autoethnography

“…The term has a double sense -referring either to the ethnography of one's own group or to autobiographical writing that has ethnographic interest. (1997: 2) This synthesis requires a reassessment of how the self and culture are conceptualized and written (Denshire and Lee, 2013). In these ways, autoethnographic writing can be simultaneously personal and scholarly, evocative and analytical, descriptive and theoretical (Burnier, 2006).…”

“…Putting the self into the picture at all is challenging enough in this context, but putting the very notion of a self at risk opens up places of vulnerability that can also be opportunities for radical reworking of categories of thought and action, including those that cross boundaries between fields or professions (Denshire and Lee, 2013).…”

“…Assemblage challenges and displaces boundaries between the individual and the social through a focus on practice, which offers a new 'ontology of the social' (Denshire and Lee, 2013). Through successive displacements of the self as the primary site of experience and meaning we seek to contribute new understandings about the potential for autoethnography to engage with professional practice as a space of multiplicity.…”