Trying Not to Lie...and Failing: Autoethnography, Memory, Malleability

Authors

John Freeman, Falmouth UniversityFollow

Abstract

All research is experiential, whether this is the experience of reading in the library or observing in the field. Autoethnographers take experience into narratives and are themselves key participants in their research, and often also its subject. For autoethnographers the idea of research as a neutral process is abandoned in favour of a self-reflective form that explores the researcher's perspective on the subject in question. Autoethnography inevitably negotiates the relationship between the stories we want to tell and the histories we have lived through; between the necessary fictions of publication/presentation and the real world experiences we draw upon. This article questions whether we can ever tell our experiences truthfully. This article questions what it might mean to write oneself into research findings and narrative reports, and it asks what happens when one's self goes further and becomes the research. It offers perspectives and provocations which are informed but not bound by autoethnography's extant body of thought and readers are invited on a brief journey through self-writing as it relates to the vagaries of memory and the illusion of truth.

Keywords

Autoethnography, Self-Deception, Self-Reflection, Experiential Research, Memory

Author Bio(s)

John Freeman is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Head of Theatre and Associate Professor in Performance Studies at Falmouth University UK. He holds an Adjunct Associate Professor position at Curtin University Western Australia and was previously Reader in Theatre and Deputy Head for the School of Arts at Brunel University West London. He is widely published in the areas of theatre, performance, autoethnograpy and creative education, with six books and approximately eighty articles to date. Recent research includes working with the Centre for Aboriginal Studies on the Halls Creek Dreaming Festival, building on stories of place in the production of performance works; a cultural regeneration project in a UK city and investigations into the cultural impact of international theatre festivals. Correspondence regarding this article can be addressed directly to: John Freeman at, johnfreeman1000@aol.com

Publication Date

6-29-2015

Creative Commons License

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

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2015.2170

Recommended APA Citation

Freeman, J. (2015). Trying Not to Lie...and Failing: Autoethnography, Memory, Malleability. The Qualitative Report, 20(6), 918-929. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2015.2170