Reading Response Two

Notes:

Autoethnography: “The researcher’s own experience a topic of investigation in its own right.”

“I start with my personal life. I pay attention to my physical feelings, thoughts, and emotions. I use what I call systematic sociological introspection and emotional recall to try to understand an experience I’ve lived through.”(737)

The affect of academic writing: The “third person passive voice gives the feeling that the work is written from nowhere written by nobody.”

Autoethnography asks readers to “think with our story instead of about it.”

The argument seems to be that through discursive writing we are able to remain critical and find more useful forms of knowledge that can blend in with our personalized ways of knowing rather than bog us down into one particular train of thought.

Other points on autoethnography:

To show us how partial and situated our understanding of the world is
To encourage compassion and promote dialogue
To be an agent of self-understanding and ethical discussion

The three axes of autoethnography:
“Emphasis on the research process (graphy), on culture (ethnos), and on self (auto).”

Questions that arose for me:

How does this concept apply to documentary? Has this technique been implemented in documentary structure and if so what are some examples?

Something that also comes to mind is reality TV, the way that it is passed off as reality with out acknowledging authorship. An interesting model that I haven’t seen in this genre is where the subjects film themselves and each other in a real world setting. It would be interesting to see how acknowledgement of authorship would affect the content. Another huge factor in the dissemination of information regarding television and film is editing which speaks to how what’s being shown is chosen and who chooses it. This also speaks to authorship or the development of information and our hand in molding it. In the model I am thinking of it would also be interesting to see what happens if each member of the project makes there own editorial decision on how the story should be laid out for viewers, where each participants version of the experience is shown.

I also noticed a repeated mention of the connection between autoethnography as a tool in feminist text and often related to being a popular form among women. I too find this to be a completely viable form from of academic writing from which we can learn a lot but I am a woman. I wonder if the basic form of academic essay writing is still useful in a gendered sense. Perhaps men receive and disburse information in this particular way while it may be better for women to receive and disburse information in the from of autoethnography. This is just a postulation, but it there are biologic al differences in human experience that also need to be addressed when trying to reach a level of understanding amongst ourselves. Regardless we need to diversify our ways of knowing, as humans we are capable of gaining new understanding in many different ways and we should tap into all of them.