The one about Autoethnography…
October 2, 2008
“Believe me, honest autoethnographic exploration generates a lot of fears and doubts–and emotional pain. Just when you think you can’t stand the pain anymore, well, that’s when the real work has only begun. Then there’s the vulnerability of reveraling yourself, not being able to take back what you’ve written or having any control over how readers interpret it. It’s hard not to feel your life is being critiqued as well as your work. It can be humiliating.” (738)
From this excerpt I can’t help but think that scientists are beginning to get a sense of what artists as a whole go through. There are always personal feelings invested in one’s work but with an auto-ethnographic account of one’s experience there is a newfound vulnerability because the emotional buffer inherent to scientific prose is in many cases completely dissolved. Ethnographers, as far as I know, usually are able to use that emotional buffer while documenting a culture. It is this emotional buffer that perpetuates, in my opinion, the pretenious nature of ethnography and consequently documentary filmmaking.
Speaking on a topic from an objective point of view creates a distance from a subject person that allows for a new perspective but that perspective also brings with it a great deal of cultural baggage. Authethnography allows an opportunity for someone with a personal experience to share it. If my understanding of this term is sound, then I support it. I support it much the same way I support documentary filmmaking from a personal point of view. Instead of installing a journalist or filmmaker or ethnographer in a culture or community have the people who would be documented document their own experience.
Combining this account with other accounts allows for a much richer and sincere account.
