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WRITING PHILOSOPHICAL
AUTOETHNOGRAPHY

Writing Philosophical Autoethnography is the result of Alec Grant’s vision

of bringing the disciplines of philosophy and autoethnography together.
This is the first volume of narrative autoethnographic work in which invited
contributing authors were charged with exploring their issues, concerns,
and topics about human society, culture, and the material world through an
explicitly philosophical lens.
Each chapter, while written autoethnographically, showcases sustained
engagement with philosophical arguments, ideas, concepts, theories, and
corresponding ethical positions. Unlike much other autoethnographic
work, within which philosophical ideas often appear to be “grafted on”
or supplementary, the philosophical basis of the work in this volume is
fundamental to its shifting content, focus, and context. The narratives in
this book, from scholars working in a range of disciplines in the humanities
and human sciences, function as narrative, conceptual, and analytical
exemplars to act as a guide for autoethnographers in their own writing, and
suggest future directions for making autoethnography more philosophically
rigorous.
This book is suitable for students and scholars of autoethnography and
qualitative methods in a range of disciplines, including the humanities,
social and human sciences, communication studies, and education.

Alec Grant, PhD, is Visiting Professor in the Department of Psychology and

Education, Faculty of Professional Studies, University of Bolton, UK.
Writing Lives
Ethnographic and Autoethnographic Narratives
Series Editors: Arthur P. Bochner, Carolyn Ellis and Tony E. Adams
University of South Florida and Bradley University

Writing Lives: Ethnographic and Autoethnographic Narratives publishes

narrative representations of qualitative research projects. The series editors
seek manuscripts that blur the boundaries between humanities and social
sciences. We encourage novel and evocative forms of expressing concrete
lived experience, including autoethnographic, literary, poetic, artistic, visual,
performative, critical, multi-voiced, conversational, and co-constructed
representations. We are interested in ethnographic narratives that depict
local stories; employ literary modes of scene setting, dialogue, character
development, and unfolding action; and include the author’s critical
reflections on the research and writing process, such as research ethics,
alternative modes of inquiry and representation, reflexivity, and evocative
storytelling. Proposals and manuscripts should be directed to abochner@
usf.edu, [email protected] or [email protected]

An Autoethnography of Letter Writing and Relationships Through Time

Finding our Perfect Moon
Jennifer L. Adams

A Performative Autoethnography of Five Black American Men

Stefan Battle

Writing Philosophical Autoethnography

Edited by Alec Grant

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Writing-

Lives-Ethnographic-Narratives/book-series/WLEN
WRITING
PHILOSOPHICAL
AUTOETHNOGRAPHY
Edited by Alec Grant
Designed cover image: Birth of a Dancing Star, painting by Alec
Grant, 2022, acrylic on canvas
First published 2024
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2024 selection and editorial matter, Alec Grant; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Alec Grant to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-22911-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-22912-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-27472-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003274728
Typeset in Optima
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For two dear friends: Professor Jerome Carson
who always enables me, and Dr Susan Young
who always gets me.
CONTENTS

Forewordxi
Reinekke Lengelle
Forewordxx
David Livingstone Smith
Acknowledgementsxxiv
Editor Biography xxv
Chapter Author Biographies xxvi

1 The Philosophical Autoethnographer 1

Alec Grant

2 Suffering Happiness: On Autoethnography’s

Ethical Calling 23
Art Bochner

3 Do I Love Dick? An Epistolary Address to Autotheory’s

Transitional Aesthetic Objects 41
Alex Brostoff

4 The Developing Feminist, Philosophical Body: An

Autoethnography of the Studious, Researching,
Working, and Retiring Lesbian Body 60
Elizabeth Ettorre
x Contents

5 Which Way is Up? A Philosophical Autoethnography

of Trying to Stand in a “Crooked Room” 80
Renata Ferdinand

6 Thinking-With: Paul Ricoeur Becomes Part

of Mark Freeman 96
Mark Freeman

7 In Search of My Narrative Character: A Philosophical

Autoethnography 114
Alec Grant

8 An Autoethnographic Examination of Organizational

Sensemaking 133
Andrew Herrmann

9 A Liminal Awakening 150

Christopher N. Poulos

10 The Personal Evolution of a Critical BlackGirl

Feminist Identity: A Philosophical Autoethnographic
Journey 167
Menah Pratt

11 Talking With Others: Autoethnography, Existential

Phenomenology, and Dialogic Being 188
Shelley Rawlins

12 Our Bodies Know Ableism: An Existential

Phenomenological Approach to Storytelling through
Disabled Bodies 209
Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock

13 Assimilation and Difference: A Māori Story 230

Georgina Tuari Stewart

14 Concluding Thoughts: Selves, Cultures, Limitations,

Futures 249
Alec Grant

Index 270
FOREWORD

Philosophy in Autoethnography: A Reflection on Quality in

Qualitative Research
In the introduction to this book, editor Alec Grant makes a case for con-
textualizing autoethnographic work within philosophical frameworks and
theories that will ensure a critical analysis of one’s narrative work. He also
names a central and very human reason why such “quality control” in the
form of critical feedback and dialogue might be undermined by the good
intentions of a community that has served to make room for minority, mar-
ginalized, and often stigmatized voices:

criticism coming from within a family can be anathema, to the extent

that it breaks tacitly held loyalty rules. But meanwhile, hard-headed crit-
icality is regularly sacrificed at the altar of what to my mind amounts to
an infantilising form of “inclusivity.”
(Introductory chapter, pp. 3–4)

It is clear that this book is a call to courage and an invitation to remember

that peer critique of one’s work is not a critique of one’s person. It holds
the fruitful possibility of telling one’s story in ways that are stronger, thereby
developing one’s self, the community, and the field.
Autoethnographers, new or not so new to the work, are invited here to
keep this vibrant research methodology alive and to benefit personally from
its generative possibilities. Without frameworks to examine and conceptu-
alize “the self” in “auto,” or describe and analyze the social, historical, and
xii Foreword

cultural in “ethno,” or play with and become aware of our form, genre, and
writing choices in “graphy,” we are destined to dumb down our stories and
risk damaging the confidence in the method.
Indeed, we may be faced with having to defend the approach once
more. Except this time, for reasons much more worrisome than when pio-
neers like Ellis, Bochner, Etherington, Richardson, and Denzin first stood for
the value of this kind of qualitative research and made fundamental strides
in the field. Ironically the earliest accusations about the work being navel-
gazing or “not real research” could become true if we as autoethnographers
aren’t willing to engage in philosophically sophisticated self-reflection and
peer review.
The idea that theory is an add-on in creating an autoethnographic nar-
rative is a ridiculous notion, though not necessarily self-evident. The rea-
son for this textbook is to argue for and show that theories (that is, the
lenses by which we situate, free, and know ourselves to be contextualized
and not infrequently stigmatized) are precursors as well as developmental
lenses. They clarify what we see, can see, and will see. Indeed, unless we
make explicit how we are and will be situating ourselves, and examine our
assumptions of how our stories came to be, we will not be able to escape
(or even realize the depths of) our narrative entrapment.
Despite the book’s call to renewed rigour, don’t be concerned that it will
be difficult or painful to read – or if it at first feels that way, let it be an inspi-
ration: a lesson in contrasts where creative failure is allowed and even wel-
comed as part of our knowledge building. It is okay to say, “I now see that
what I want to accomplish intellectually is at odds with what I am hitherto
accomplishing.” This book offers important questions, and its chapters are
rich and evocative (dare I use the word!) examples of how to develop philo-
sophical criticality. One might see the book as a refresher course or intel-
lectual knife sharpener that not only serves as a checklist and tuning fork
for better work, but resists the risk of our writing becoming marginalized or
discounted, or even worse, devolving into pathetic personal laments.
True to form, editor Alec Grant is self-critical and questions whether
some of his critiques are motivated by his own “perfectionism” – however,
I see no evidence of this in this volume. The message rather is “that good
autoethnography demands diligence, sustained effort, and significant per-
sonal struggles on the part of writers and readers who have real ‘skin in the
game’ ” (Intro p. 5), and this book fulfils this promise.
Art Bochner’s chapter does this in his analysis of what it means to
write autoethnography in response to a comment that the material cov-
ered by autoethnographers is often unhappy. He explores what it means
to be happy, drawing on many sources – both historical and popular – and
 Foreword xiii

shows how he leads his students to think beyond their simplistic notions
and hopes. As a “founding father” of autoethnography, Bochner is willing as
ever to examine this argument levelled against the method, reminding the
reader why we need narrative to untangle and examine difficulty.
His treatise reminded me of expressive writing researcher James Penne-
baker’s observation that when good things happen they don’t require inte-
gration, while difficulty leads humans to storying and re-storying (2011).
That is why autoethnography will always include life’s difficulties while at
the same time being a method of writing for well-being, as it seeks to make
(valuable) meaning of suffering.
Alex Brostoff’s chapter is a well-designed and facetious exploration of
the book “I love Dick” by filmmaker and academic Chris Krause. Brostoff
demonstrates how in using what I will call “a metaform,” one can analyse
a piece of work using its own aesthetic properties (in this case, letters) to
increasingly unpeel layers of meaning yet have the courage to not resolve
the questions that are generated. At its core, this chapter is an exploration
of the nature of voice and how it is represented in textual form: how it can
be used (and misused) to challenge our assumptions about reality. For many
this chapter will be a challenging read; the need to park one’s assumptions
about form and to read about Krause’s work beforehand will make it more
accessible.
Betsy Ettorre tells the compelling story of her academic career as a
researcher, describing the often-toxic contexts she worked in because of
being an out lesbian in the seventies and eighties in the UK. Now in retire-
ment, she reflects on a lifetime of work as a sociologist in the field of women
and addiction and she speaks of the “need to be rigorously self-aware, to
be meticulously humble and most importantly, to be cognizant of the com-
plex connections between the socially coded categories of race, gender,
age, able-bodiedness, class and sex.” (p. 62) She uses various concepts and
theories to situate and examine her narrative; for instance, the concept of
“la mestiza” by Gloria Anzaldua (1987), which allows Ettorre to explore the
“ambiguity of personal and social relationships.”
Renata Ferdinand’s chapter explores the concept of “standing in a
crooked room” as a Black woman mangling herself to fit the stereotype of
the respectable “white woman” (therefore inadvertently also falling into
Black women stereotypes). A racist remark made by a white male profes-
sor triggers the split in the author’s identification with “Renata” (i.e., the
respectable one) and her alter ego “Pinkie,” representing legitimate anger
at being demeaned again and again. She conceptualizes the need for rec-
ognition using Hegel’s concept of Anerkennung. Her story reminded me of
the concepts “suture and stigma” in a textbook on writing and healing by
xiv Foreword

Anderson and MacCurdy (2000), which shows that the narratives we have
internalized not only risk contorting us but annihilating us.
As a white woman academic writing the midlife journey, I recognized
the narrative entrapment of this “good girl” stereotype in my own life. The
scene she sketches of herself as “Pinkie” on the hunt for the white male
professor is riveting and took me with her on this fierce walk of visceral
anger. I believe many non-tenured faculty at the hands of our current neo-
liberal academy will also relate to this anger at being discredited and thus
disenfranchised.
Mark Freeman makes the case that there is “no ‘thinking’ per se. There is
only thinking-with,” (p. 96) and this brings home acutely the message of
this book. We need to ponder how we came to “be” as we are – that is,
which theoretical and conceptual lenses we are looking through, even if
those lenses have become such a part of us that we will inevitably “plagia-
rize” and will struggle to discern the origin of each strand. This is further
complicated by the notion of “distanciation”: that we interpret the past
through a present lens which will always alter what we see and render
every self-narrative a fiction, and therefore – shockingly perhaps – every
self as well. However, paradoxically, this fictionalizing can bring us closer
to “deeper truths” as metaphorical language does in poetry.
Freeman’s chapter radiates a gratitude for the thinkers who have influ-
enced and “colonized” his way of being in the world, as well as humour as
Freeman reflects on his chance as a young man to study with Paul Ricœur:
“Even the name seemed magical. Ricœur. Like a cassoulet, accompanied
by a rich Bordeaux. Or something like that. (“Fuckin’ A!”)” He even receives
a typed letter from Ricœur in response to his fledging philosophical work,
which is included in the chapter.
Alec Grant’s chapter takes three distinct memories, salient in his life,
to explore his identification with an “effectively trickster-carnivalesque”
character. Using inspiration from Freeman’s work, Grant distinguishes
between historical truth and narrative truth, the latter ever changing and
necessarily “open-ended, unfinalized, partial and provisional.” (p. 118)
The memories – which he uses to describe the evolution of his “nar-
rative character” – are deeply engaging and are described in painfully
funny ways. An encounter with one of two English folk music club
“characters” is described as a kind of torture (i.e., “Nietzschean eternal
recurrence”). The atmosphere of the clubs that in his younger years had
nurtured Grant now seem to him to have become caricatures of them-
selves. He argues that our retelling is not only a way to make mean-
ing but that we also tell to self-protect, an idea he borrows from the
American philosopher, Daniel Dennett.
 Foreword xv

In addition to Grant’s thorough analysis of the personal and cultural

implications of identifying with the “trickster” in service of disrupting cul-
tural scripts and norms, he offers autoethnographers useful space to explore
and pinpoint multiple motives for narrating: “I understand my life story to
be comprised of constantly revised and re-embellished personal memo-
ries” (p. 121), and “I’ve found myself needing to make my self-culture mis-
match feel less embarrassing by rescuing my remembered self from moral
disgrace in more sophisticated ways.” (p. 124).
This chapter affirms that critical reflection is part of having an ethical
compass as we do this work, but that our work as autoethnographers is not to
spare feelings but rather to undo cultural and personal “en-strangle-ments,”
to coin a term with Grant’s own carnivalesque wit.
Andrew Herrmann takes readers into phenomenological existentialism,
which cannot be – and should not be, he argues – precisely defined but
explains in part the “inhospitality . . . queasy nauseousness . . . angst” we
experience as humans. In this chapter, Herrmann honors and describes the
work of theorist Karl E. Weick and his influence on many terrains, but espe-
cially organizational development and the complex processes of sense-
making within these. Through this philosophical lens, Herrmann explains
how communication cycles are needed to engage in sensemaking, and
how sensemaking influences our identity development. He explains that
ruptures in expected patterns alert us to our relationship to things, and this
disorientation in organizations leads to multiple (that is, equivocal) inter-
pretations that need to be made sense of and reduced into useful meaning.
This chapter is valuable in bringing to light how narrative is the way in
which we make use of relevant data to shape identity, recognizing that the
importance of the “I” within organizations could help enact sensemaking
more fully, as individual identity is always affected within organizational
difficulties and change processes.
Christopher N. Poulos takes us on a journey that is both heartfelt and
intellectually stimulating. He describes the reason he has been writing
autoethnography and describes a key human problem: being – always –
aware of our inevitable ending. His theoretical – mostly existential –
­frameworks include the works of Buber, Kierkegaard, Percy, Sartre, Tillich,
and Camus’s take on the tale of Sisyphus from Greek mythology. One of the
central ideas in Poulos’s chapter is that we survive mentally by imagining
and reaching for possibility, without which we would be lost. He illustrates
his own relationship to these ideas with the story of the death of his father
and the unresolved feelings he had around their relationship.
This part of his story was particularly recognizable for me, having myself
written an autoethnographic book on bereavement (Lengelle, 2021) and
xvi Foreword

writing about unfinished business with my spouse. The illusion that conflict
dies when a beloved does is a raw awakening that leaves us extra vulnera-
ble in grief. Regardless of circumstances, it’s clear that many bereaved peo-
ple find themselves reaching for more solid ground and possibility through
places, objects, memories, and telling stories. Poulos does this when he
finds a baseball his father seems to have placed in full view – as if signaling
to his son that he acknowledged their connection.
The chapter ends with a fantastic(al) dialogue between the author and
Sisyphus, reminding us that, as Camus explains, we have time to do some-
thing useful on our way down the slope (that is, the moment of rest between
all our striving).
Menah Pratt leads us through the evolution of her identity by observing
and reflecting on the influence other Black women philosophers and femi-
nists like Dotson, James, Gines, and Allen had on her thinking. She shares
important moments when those theories and philosophies intersected with
her lived experience and how those came to shape her identity as a “critical
Blackgirl feminist scholar-activist.” Like Rawlins in the next chapter, Pratt
points out that the self we talk about is never a thing that exists in isolation:

This self-defined voice is a voice that is often a relational identity influ-

enced and informed by family, community, and diasporic realities. It is
an individual and collective voice impacted by the intertwined identi-
ties of generations, gender, sexuality, race, religion, and class (Collins,
2000).
(p. 170)

Her poetry is clear and to the point, and as a researcher of writing for
well-being (and co-editor of a recent book that includes a powerful chapter
by Pratt on how writing helped her heal), I could see its direct application
for poetry therapy practice – for instance, using the following lines and ask-
ing students “what can’t you ask . . .” and “when do you touch on a subject
that is so hard, when you know it will be turned back on you . . . ?”

When you’re Black

and things don’t work out
You wonder, sometimes
“Is it me, my skin, or them?”
One can’t ask (p. 173)

Shelley Rawlins reminds us, like Pratt, that our “selves” are created and
shaped within dialogical relationships, and that autoethnographic work