An Autoethnography in Four Acts or A Bright Humiliation. (June 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Limes-Taylor, Kelly; Kaufmann, Jodi
• Is Part Of: Qualitative inquiry. Volume 20:Number 5(2014)
• Page Start: 551
• Page End: 559
• Publication Date: 2014-06
• Subjects: ethnicity and race -- autoethnography -- ethnographies -- methodologies -- counter-narrative -- methods of inquiry; Social sciences -- Methodology -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- Research -- Periodicals; 300.72
• DOI: 10.1177/1077800413505544
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1077-8004

Abstract

In this autoethnography, the authors try to reconcile knowledge of theory, prose, and poetry with the understandings of Kelly's role as a domestic worker. While focusing on four events in Kelly's tenure as a maid, the authors present literature that mirrors, predicts, and provides an analysis of her experiences and her reactions to/thoughts about them. If all the world truly is a stage, this autoethnography aims to trouble the entire production—from the actors to the audience, from the script to the setting. Above all else, of course, the narrator is to be questioned. Never objective, never omniscient, literature and theory insist on an interrogation of the narrator, who always has a motive for revealing some parts of the story and not others.