Autoethnography is a Queer Method

Abstract

This chapter argues auto-ethnography as a queer research method, one that not only works against canonical methodological traditions and ‘disciplining, normalizing, social forces’ but also one that satisfies the call and need to provide a pragmatic, accessible way of representing research, a way that devotes itself with ‘grounded, everyday life’. Auto ethnography and queer theory share conceptual and purposeful affinities: Both refuse received notions of orthodox methodologies and focus instead on fluidity, inter subjectivity and responsiveness to particularities. Auto ethnography and queer theory are both also often criticized for being too much and too little, too much personal mess, too much theoretical jargon, too elitist, too sentimental, too removed, too difficult, too easy, too white, too Western, too colonialist, too indigenous. Queer theory primarily developed from the work of three scholars: Judith Butler, Teresa de Lauretis and Eve Sedgwick. Queer can also serve as a temporary and contingent linguistic home for individuals living outside norms of sex and gender.