Life Challenge Memory Work: Using Collaborative Autobiography to Understand Ourselves

Abstract

Using memory work, a group of eight adults in a university setting wrote, shared, and theorized memories of life challenges we experienced. In this study, we have adapted and refined memory work as a method, and we model this by presenting and examining a comprehensive case example of memory work. Our memories were of four main types: stories of dangerous events, the unruly body/self, leaving home/returning home, and negotiating social relationships. Processes of writing, performing, witnessing, and theorizing led us to identify ruptures and turning points that revealed ways in which we have been culturally inscribed as well as our agency in integrating social discourses into our identity. Our results point to the value of collaborative autobiography as a route to insight, a way to build community, and a means to democratize research.

Bloggers on FIRE Performing Identity and Building Community: Considerations for Cyber-Autoethnography

“…I was particularly interested in the methodological aspects of autoethnography (Ellis, 2004) with its promise for new forms of scholarly collaboration (Lapadat et al, 2005), and as an approach to teaching qualitative research methods to graduate students (Lapadat, 2009;Lapadat, Bryant et al, 2009, Lapadat, Black et al, 2010. I explored and wrote about what is now called collaborative autoethnography (CAE;Chang et al, 2013), and, in particular, the ethical aspects of CAE (Lapadat, 2017(Lapadat, , 2018.…”

From speed dating to intimacy: methodological change in the evaluation of a writing group

“…Memory work was developed within the context of feminist emancipation and Marxism for the explicit purpose of liberation (Lapadat, George, Black, & Clark, 2010;Onyx & Small, 2001). However, our group also deviated from the memory work approach both in intent and process.…”

Recruited into Danishness? Affective autoethnography of passing as Danish

“…Autoethnography is increasingly used by feminist-inspired researchers to examine race/whiteness, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and other intersecting markers in the Nordic context (Ahlstedt, 2015; Andreassen and Ahmed-Andresen, 2014; Mainsah and Prøitz, 2015). Like memory work, autoethnography facilitates reflexivity about researcher positionings and the politics of location (Rich, 1984) in the production of partial, situated knowledges (Humphreys, 2005; Lapadat et al, 2010). Autoethnography enables one to trace the emergence of racialized bodies (Fisher, 2015) by analysing the affective circulations of fieldwork encounters.…”