I am a novice narratologist. I’m interested in the stories we live and tell, and how we can ultimately learn from them. In my work as an independent scholar, I keep coming across the term autoethnography. I don’t know exactly what it is, but it seems, at first glance, very much in line with my immediate interest in interrogating my own personal narrative. My next step is to co-inquire with others as they do the same.
In March, I wrote this as I was theorizing about my connection to personal narratives and coming to understand life as text:
We have a say. Writing gives voice to thoughts and makes them visible. In their visibility they become tangible: A memory becomes a guiding light. An amorphous thought becomes a pathway, a next step. It becomes something I can touch and do. Through writing, thoughts can become action.
Today I’m reading an essay on autoethnography by Stacey Holman Jones. She says:
These endeavors {performance ethnography, performative writing, and personal performance narratives} point to how personal stories become a means for interpreting the past, translating and transforming contexts, and envisioning a future.
Now, I still can’t say for sure what autoethnography is, but it certainly seems as if I’m on a good track. Stay tuned.