An Autoethnographic Performance: The Researcher’s Story of Hysterectomy and Menopause as Act of Resistance and Activism

Grace O' Grady

doi:10.1177/19408447211042802

Abstract

One year after beginning a large-scale research inquiry into how young people construct their identities I became ill and subsequently underwent abdominal surgery which triggered an early menopause. The process which was experienced as creatively bruising called to be written as “Artful Autoethnography” using visual images and poetry to tell a “vulnerable, evocative and therapeutic” story of illness, menopause, and their subject positions in intersecting relations of power. The process which was experienced as disempowering called to be performed as an act of resistance and activism. This performance ethnography is in line with the call for qualitative inquirers to move beyond strict methodological boundaries. In particular, the voice of activism in this performance is in the space between data (human voice and visual art pieces) and theory. To this end, and in resisting stratifying institutional/medical discourse, the performance attempts to create a space for a merger of ethnography and activism in public/private life.

Highlights

When I think of writing autoethnographically, I immediately return to that seminal work of Carolyn Ellis, The Ethnographic I
Madison’s (2012, p. 7) critical, performative autoethnography appealed here. She says performative autoethnography begins with an ethical responsibility to address suffering within an historical moment and with a commitment to perform acts of activism that advance the causes of human rights
Time collapses, drawing memories into the present, recreating experience “through fresh tropes with new tools” (Gannon, 2018, p. 180). This performance ethnography is in line with the call for qualitative inquirers to move beyond strict methodological boundaries and representational thinking to experimentalism and new ontoepistemological practices (Grant, 2018, p. 107)

Summary

Introduction

When I think of writing autoethnographically, I immediately return to that seminal work of Carolyn Ellis, The Ethnographic I. In resisting stratifying institutional/medical discourse, the performance attempts to create a space for a merger of ethnography and activism in public/private life (Denzin, 2018b).

Results

Conclusion