The art of ‘writing in’ the hospital under‐life: auto‐ethnographic reflections on subjugated knowledges in everyday practice

Abstract

Every working life will have a number of subjugated places, an ‘immense remainder’ of human experience that ‘does not speak’. Auto‐ethnography, an evocative and analytical form of writing which is itself an art, connects personal and cultural worlds by ‘writing in’ these ordinary everyday experiences. This auto‐ethnographic study re‐inscribes the everyday world of practice, which was ‘written out’ of my publications on the practices of a youth‐specific occupational therapy project undertaken in the 1980s at Camperdown Children’s Hospital. The paper evokes the hospital’s ‘under‐life’ as I experienced it. An assemblage of sense impressions and memories evokes the particular place where my writings are set and a gender analysis of hospital spaces in the early 1980s portrays the experience of a woman working in that place at that time. Auto‐ethnographic accounts of practice can contribute to the field by revealing subjugated knowledges in professions populated by women.