Unsettling the self: Autoethnography and related kin

Abstract

Autoethnography, intimate ethnography, and ethnographic memoir have become increasingly central modes of anthropological writing. Although this trend has historical precedents, as found in the work of Zora Neale Hurston, Ruth Behar, and others, this two-part special section explores the directions this work is taking, the potential contributions of such writing, and how we might analyze this trend. What does the expansion of these anthropological subgenres tell us both about our times and anthropology? How does “unsettling the self” require rethinking not only boundaries between selves and others, but our roles as anthropologists and our discipline in order to produce writing that, as Behar suggests, “does not alienate ourselves from our ourselves?” How does “unsettling the self” also entail, as Anand Pandian observes, “unsettling the world” around us, including explorations of contemporary capitalism, settler colonialism, racial politics, or the agency of natural environments or nonhumans? What are the ethical questions and the limits engendered by such work, and what might such trends bode for anthropology's future? This special section integrates examples of these growing anthropological subgenres alongside efforts to theorize this mode of writing as we attempt to answer Alisse Waterston's provocation: What is such work potentially “good for?”