Abstract
In asking what it means to perform an ethnographic other, I, a middle-aged White American man, struggle with a performance of my older Taiwanese Tai Chi teacher. Although everyday life performance (ELP) leads me ever closer to an exact copy of Master Han’s behaviors, it simultaneously clarifies difference. Is it mimesis or alterity? Am I presenting or representing? Am I integrating participant and observer? Is autoethnography, like poetry, something that can get near but not there? When I perform my Tai Chi master, does my audience see him, me, both, or something else? What knowledge claim would I make were I to perform my own brother instead of Master Han? How do we understand knowledge that resides in the body? How do we know that we know? My experience performing Master Han leads me to further question the epistemology of representation.
Published Version
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