Whose Story Is It? An Autoethnography Concerning Narrative Identity

Authors

Alec J. Grant, University of BrightonFollow
Laetitia Zeeman, University of BrightonFollow

Abstract

This paper is divided into three parts, each separated by centrally spaced asterisks. The first part, co-written on the basis of the standpoint interests of both authors, outlines the historical, philosophical, theoretical and methodological contexts for the use of autoethnographic short stories in the social and human sciences. The functions and representational practices of this genre are reviewed and discussed, and the main criticisms leveled by its detractors responded to. This sets the scene for the second part of the paper, an autoethnographic short story. Effectively a story of stories, it was constructed directly from the first author’s memories of his early life in relation to textual material and was written exclusively by him. In part three, some of the significant issues raised in the story are discussed in relation to larger co-evolving social, cultural and therapeutic frameworks from a reflexive and narrative identity perspective. It is written as, and represents, an extended, unfinished dialogue between the first and second author.

Keywords

Autoethnography, Ethnographic Stories, Narrative Turn, Reflexivity, Narrative Identity, Culture, Re-Storying Identity

Publication Date

9-3-2012

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2012.1735

Recommended APA Citation

Grant, A. J., & Zeeman, L. (2012). Whose Story Is It? An Autoethnography Concerning Narrative Identity. The Qualitative Report, 17(36), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2012.1735