I See the Stars: An Autoethnographer Speaks on Fieldwork and Flashbacks

Abstract

This text speaks on flashbacks of lived experiences in doing ethnographic fieldwork. The weaving of multiple and diverse flashbacks that often “stood” right before the author’s eyes at certain points in time during the interviews, observations, and participation in the everyday events of four Asian Indian families’ life experiences is the descriptive task of this text. The process of the evocation is layered, never linear. Each flashback is a lived experience embraced by the mind, like snapshots, bringing into focus similar phenomena, words, rituals, beliefs, or issues from elsewhere in the past. Each flashback is triggered by the evocation of a sense at the time of observing, speaking, listening, and simply being there at the place of inquiry. Through events, narratives, beliefs, poems, personal communication, quotes, and the taking back and forth of such conscious and unconscious states of the mind, the researcher experiences rather than merely encounters the world.