This Text Which Is Not One: Dialectics of Self and Culture in Experimental Autoethnography

Abstract

This Text Which Is Not One is an experiment in textual fragmentation. It proposes a method for writing culture and identity in ways that might encourage individuals to embrace theoretical contestation and interpretive difference at the same time that it helps them to recuperate identity as fundamental to critical discourses and modes of analysis aligned with cultural studies. The A. aims to disrupt the presentation and consumption of the grand narrative that scholarly articles and ethnographies aspire to be, while also enacting her article's theoretical underpinnings through text play and multivocality. Her piece relates specifically to textual fragmentation within the context of experimental autoethnography and postmodern theories of multiple subjectivities, but the applicability of such textual fragmentation to more traditional ethnographic projects should be readily apparent.