Narratives on Longing, Being, and Knowing Envisioning a Writing Epistemology

Abstract

Abstract:In this paper, I problematize the inextricable relationship between how I constitute knowledge and how I articulate knowledge. Through various narrative reflections I explore my own reckoning with dominant ways of articulating knowledge that reinforce ways of constituting knowledge that are inherently strange to me. I also outline my sojourns and departures into and from emergent modes of articulating knowledge such as personal narrative and autoethnography. Even though I acknowledge the emancipator nature of these modes, I show myself in tension with them in terms of their fit with my own geographies and topographies. I conclude with a discussion of a larger project I envision which implicates new modes of articulating knowledge that assume a much larger notion of self and personhood. I argue that a larger notion of self is vital to the making of a more expansive and inclusive definition of knowledge

Introduction: Decolonizing Autoethnography

“…Autoethnography is positioned as a compelling method that disrupts traditional and Eurocentric norms of research practice and representation (Holman Jones et al, 2013). Or, as Chawla and Rodriguez (2008) point out, autoethnography is the "postcolonial turn" that ethnography, traditionally rooted in discourses and practices of colonialism, has taken because it re-centers the researcher (the Other) and her story as subject/participant and context in the field. Pathak (2013) eloquently articulates this re-centering by positioning postcolonial autoethnography as a mode of inquiry that allows us to engage both "the story and its story" (p. 598).…”

Toward De/Postcolonial Autoethnography: Critical Relationality With the Academic Second Persona

“…Objectivist research generally predicates the methodological separation of the subject and the object, where the subject-the knower-colonizes the object-the known-through the very act of knowing. The "objectivist" ethnography has been critiqued (Ellis & Bochner, 2006) for its adherence to the "normalizing power of academia" (West, J. T. 1993, p. 216), subjugating the body and feelings while privileging the ethnographic mind, constituted within the discursive practices of colonialism (Chawla & Rodriguez, 2008). Conquergood (1991) notes, "Although ethnographic fieldwork privileges the body, published ethnographies typically have repressed bodily experience in favor of abstract theory and analysis" (p. 181).…”

“…Ellis and Bochner (2006) insist on the importance of our bodies and emotions in ethnographic research processes, which are oftentimes filtered out in academic publications. Chawla and Rodriguez (2008) argue that autoethnography has situated and propels the "postcolonial" turn within ethnographic studies, although the "post" does not signify the "end" of its colonial legacy. I believe that autoethnography holds decolonizing potentialities because, similar to red pedagogy, it "makes no claim to political neutrality" (Grande, 2008, p. 250).…”

“…It assists us to pause and contemplate what and how the mainstream academic discourse has constructed legitimate research to be. By being what Ellis and Bochner (2006) consider to be "unruly, dangerous, vulnerable, rebellious, and creative" (p. 433), autoethnography is, indeed, essential in challenging and liberating today's academic culture (see Chawla & Rodriguez, 2008;Denzin, 2014).…”

Not a Metaphor: Immigrant of Color Autoethnography as a Decolonial Move

“…Politically, autoethnography issues a challenge to scientific notions of truth as objective and rigid by raising epistemological questions about what counts as knowledge (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011). Stylistically, it exposes the regulatory functions of writing and scholarship conventions through a preferred first-person narrative (Chawla & Rodriguez, 2008). In doing so, the researcher offers a more complicated picture of how the world functions through highly personal accounts while keeping track of their own position in this "truth-making" endeavor.…”