Autoethnography allows the sociologist the ultimate hermeneutic method: the ability to tease out the nuanced structure of unconscious desire. The author theorizes desire here as a driving force that informs the symbolic work of everyday life. To explore subjectivity, desire, and the patriarchal family, the author juxtaposes memory and social theory, extending and embodying a theoretical conflict that informed the work of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. With this device, the author makes connections between childhood representations of masculinity and psychoanalytic notions of freedom and (non)identity.
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