(Auto)Ethnography Underground

Some French "Fibrils" and "Scratches

Bibliographic Data

ID2386583
AuthorsJérôme Beauchez (0000-0002-0091-0392, Université de Strasbourg)
Year2020
Volume26
Issue10
Pages1269-1280
Publication date2020-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueQualitative Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1077-8004 • E-ISSN: 1552-7565
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1077800419879205
OpenAlexW2979702778
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited23

This essay examines the ethnographer's "underground" as a foundational research space lacking in light: the light provided by being fully aware of our motives and by illuminating the "lack" that leads us to look for something in others, who then become the human instruments of our research. From as early as the 1930s, the ethnographic "I" was central to how Michel Leiris viewed his engagement with research, so much so that the French writer and researcher is an often forgotten or underestimated precursor of a type of reflexivity that has placed questioning research subjects at the heart of (auto)ethnography. This essay returns to the forms taken by Leiris's writing, viewing them as a foundational impulse for an autoethnography that takes a detour to the self via others without this simply being a return to the self

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Autoethnography · Ethnography · Linguistics · Reflexivity · Sociology · Visual arts · Anthropology · Contemporary art, education, critique · Cultural Identity and Heritage · Education, sociology, and vocational training · Philosophy