Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis

TLDR

Autoethnographic performance merges autobiographic impulse and ethnographic moment through movement and critical self‑reflexive discourse, interpreting culture via self‑reflections and cultural refractions of identity to articulate intersections of peoples and culture through an ever‑migratory identity. The article argues that autoethnographic performance offers personal, professional, and political emancipatory potential and proposes evaluative standards that position the body as a site of scholarly awareness and corporeal literacy. The methodology is grounded in evaluative standards that treat the body as a site of scholarly awareness and corporeal literacy. Autoethnographic performance heightens awareness of how we witness and construct our own reality.

Abstract

This article argues the personal/professional/political emancipatory potential of autoethnographic performance as a method of inquiry. Autoethnographic performance is the convergence of the “autobiographic impulse” and the “ethnographic moment” represented through movement and critical self-reflexive discourse in performance, articulating the intersections of peoples and culture through the innersanctions of the always migratory identity. The article offers evaluative standards for the autoethnographic performance methodology, calling on the body as a site of scholarly awareness and corporeal literacy. Autoethnographic performance makes us acutely conscious of how we “ Iwitness” our own reality constructions. Interpreting culture through the self-reflections and cultural refractions of identity is a defining feature of autoethnographic performance.