Arts-Based Research: Autoethnography & Autotheory

 
 

Written by Kenneth Haggett

Thumbnail and Banner Photo by Stephen Phillips on Unsplash


Arts-based research (ABR) offers researchers the opportunity to creatively ask and answer questions about the social and cultural world. However, as previously explored, ABR also allows researchers to take a more active role in the research process. One way we do so is by being a key participant in the research process—and sometimes even the sole participant. Autoethnography and autotheory are two significant methodological approaches researchers can use for self-study. Though closely related, these approaches differ in how they gather, present, and discuss research. 


What is Autoethnography?

 Autoethnography grew out of an anthropological tradition, in which researchers would immerse themselves in a ‘foreign’ culture to collect qualitative ‘data’ about that culture and its people, known as ethnography (Ellis et al., 2011). For example, a cultural studies scholar might choose to travel to London, immerse themself in queer nightlife, and provide (subjective) scholarly analyses and discussions about this demographic. However, critiques of objectivity, positivism, and colonial research practices in the social sciences led many postmodern researchers to adopt more reflexive ethnographic research. Thus, autoethnography emerged as a methodology to center the researcher within the research process to answer questions about one’s own position within (and influence by) socio-cultural norms, discourses, and power structures. 


While akin to biography, in that one tells of their lived experience(s), autoethnographic researchers aim to provide analyses of social, cultural, and/or political institutions and systems, offering scholarly reflections on the external world, rooted in their own experience. As a key example, my own research offers personal reflections on my shifting gender embodiment as a participant in my local (queer) dance scene. In contrast to an ethnographic project—where I would enter the dance scene as an observer—I am a member of this community and draw on my lived experience, both within and beyond this setting, to tell a story about my growth as a queer, femme-embodied individual.


 
 

What is Autotheory?

In academic research, theory has traditionally been quite dissociated from participants’ subjectivity and lived experience. That is, theories are either posed in advance of the research process to be tested or constructed from the data collected from other subjects (i.e., grounded theory). In contrast, autotheory blends biography and critical theory, drawing on the researcher’s own lived experience to generate theoretical paradigms and insights. Unlike autoethnography, reflections on the wider socio-cultural context are not a central concern for autotheorists (though they can be a byproduct!). Instead, autotheory allows researchers to resist conventional notions of theory-building that disconnect subjectivity from theory. Using personal experiences, autotheorists aim to tell stories and generate theory—to “think and feel at the same time” and “make theory more human.” 

Autotheory is considered to have been pioneered by scholars within the field of women and gender studies. For instance, Maggie Nelson’s (2015) The Argonauts and Paul B. Preciado’s (2008) Testo Junkie have been widely cited as popularizing what is now known as autotheory. However, accrediting “autotheory” as a methodology to these two authors overlooks the women of colour who did this work throughout the late 20th century. Works by Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Gloria Anzaldúa have long blended theory and their lived experiences as women of colour. Though many Black feminist thinkers do not align with autotheory, the methodology as it is conventionally understood today owes itself to the work of critical race feminists.

The Self as Method

Autoethnography and autotheory are key methodological frameworks that many queer, feminist, cultural studies, and critical race scholars use to create subjective knowledge. Instead of drawing on other subjects to produce this data (‘extractive’ research), the researcher looks within, drawing on their own lived experience to tell stories. As such, at the core of these methodological frameworks lies the multiple aspects of the self—embodiment, emotion, and introspection—which have historically been excluded from academia. 

Centring the self within the research process resists the extractive processes of traditional research methods. Though positivist research prides itself on uncovering objective ‘truth,’ it sometimes misses the truth embedded in lived realities; instead, the researcher uses their own subjective lens to speak to another’s experience. As such, some of this research (within the social sciences, anyway) could be a transgression of ethical and moral boundaries. For instance, ethnographers of the past often entered racialized communities to generate knowledge of their culture and people. However, due to the prominence of white supremacy, the research often misrepresented these groups, drawing on racial stereotypes and biases to inform their analyses. Using the self as a site of knowledge resists these academic injustices that exclude subjective experience as a means to construct knowledge. Methodologies such as autoethnography and autotheory thus provide fresh perspectives that were historically excluded from academia.

Bringing lived experience and subjectivity into academic discourse, autoethnography and autotheory resist dominant conceptions of what constitutes “valid” research. Through these arts-based research methodologies, scholars can offer valuable insights and tell stories grounded in their own subjective experiences.

Jacob Butler