A tale of grappling: Performative duoethnography as expanded methodological thinking

Abstract

This article is a tale of two researchers, teachers, and artists grappling and playing with duoethnography. By expanding the methodology, we aim to bridge duoethnography into pedagogy. Grappling with the methodological to pedagogical bridge, we found that intertwined performative aspects of doing a duoethnography could challenge our knowledge production and roles as researchers and the current and more dominant practices that we operate within. We engage with a performative paradigm (Bolt, 2016) and lean on relevant theories from new materialist feminist thinkers such as Karen Barad (2003, 2007), Lenz Taguchi (2009, 2012) and Tami Spry (2011, 2016), while dialoguing with Joe Norris and Richard D. Sawyer’s (2012) tenets of duoethnography. Our embodiment of these tenets, intertwined with our theoretical positioning, allows our investigation to expand into a performative duoethnography. As an end, we propose duoethnography as a critical performative pedagogy (Pineau, 2002) and offer this article as a playful impulse connecting methodological considerations with pedagogy.