Bodies of/as Evidence in Autoethnography

Abstract

Qualitative researchers are aptly positioned to address issues implicated in the politics of evidence in scholarship. Autoethnography in particular carries important methodological implications for how the body is sited in what constitutes knowledge, evidence, and the evidence of knowledge. I argue that if autoethnography is epistemic, then the evidence of how we know what we know must reside in the aesthetic crafting of critical reflexion upon the body-as-evidence. As we develop “post” methodologies we may be in danger of expecting the personal or emotional to stand in for literary acumen. Performative autoethnography resides in the intersections of knowledge construction and art, in the aesthetic articulation of the performative body, in a personally political reflection whose evidence is an epistemic/aesthetic praxis. I utilize autoethnographic writing on loss and hope to operationalize the epistemic/aesthetic praxis as an ethical imperative for performative autoethnography.