Facing the Soprano: Uncovering a Feminist Performative “I” Through Autoethnography

Abstract

This article unpacks three auto-narratives drawn from my embodied experiences journeying from soprano to researcher. A feminist theoretical performative “I” is created through the use of performative autoethnography, a position of situated knowledge and Judith Butler’s thinking of gender as performative. I explore the query: How is a singer’s feminist performative I created through autoethnography? By unpacking my lived experiences I establish a connection between the I and the context I live in, referred to as “the Other”. This connection then illuminates how my voice has been constructed and disciplined to that of a normative feminine soprano by attaining and repeating actions from the social-culture context of singing. I also leverage off Butler’s thinking and how it may foreclose the attention to the materiality of the body, and lean into a performative embodied, new perspective. Embracing both the soprano and researcher role I create a position that brings me into a “liminal space”. I do this to better understand the intersection of music education and gender, the becoming of a researcher, researching with the “inside out”, and to embrace the material body’s actual contribution in (to) the web of meanings in the sociocultural context of singing. By carving out a connection between being a soprano and moving into my researcher voice, I offer this article as an expanded way of knowing – a knowing through being. In turn, such insights offer epistemological and ontological ways of thinking for those experiencing similar encounters.

Care as technology for exclusion

“…In a newly published anthology focusing on the context of higher music education in the Nordic countries (Angelo et al, 2021a), norms of quality and professionality are highlighted in several chapters. Gender inequality (Borgström Källén, 2021) and gendered norms (Jensen, 2021) as well as tensions between generalist and specialist music teacher programmes (Eidsvaag & Angelo, 2021) are some examples. In a study of dominating discourses within four higher educational institutions, Angelo et al (2021b) discuss issues concerning "what and whose knowledge, views on music, humans, societies, learning and teaching, and values and visions are governed in higher music education, and who and what that are left out" (p. 380).…”

A tale of grappling: Performative duoethnography as expanded methodological thinking

“…For some time, we have both worked within autoethnographic spaces (see for example : Martin, 2016: Martin, , 2019Jenssen, 2021). Autoethnography embraces the significance of exploring the self to gain insight and understanding of Others, and that this engagement of self and Other gives potential to understand broader cultural concerns and phenomena (Adams et al, 2014;Chang, 2008;Ellis, 2004;Ellis & Bochner, 2000).…”