Implicated Audience Member Seeks Understanding: Reexamining the “Gift” of Autoethnography

Authors

Keith Berry

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-2006

Keywords

autoethnography, ethnographic research, subjectivity, hermeneutic self-implicature, circumspection, narrative, academic conflict and criticism

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690600500309

Abstract

Researchers have characterized autoethnography as a highly evocative and personalized mode of discourse that affects authors and their audiences. In this article, the author examines autoethnography by recalling experiences communicating with Tillmann-Healy's (2005) “The State of Unions: Activism (and In-Activism) in Decision 2004,” an autoethnographic poem about recent U.S. election results, civic inactivity among gay men, and the need for their political engagement. Sparked by a philosophical goal more to understand and respond than to admonish and territorialize, the author uses hermeneutic phenomenology and narrative reflections to consider the complexities of autoethnographic communication, and the hope and challenges that such personalized accounts of “experience” make possible for conversational partners.

Was this content written or created while at USF?

No

Citation / Publisher Attribution

International Journal of Qualitative Methods, v. 5, issue 3, p. 94-108

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