To Be or Not to Be,That Is the Question: A Journey Through Performance Autoethnography

Abstract

Across significant moments in my training in performative autoethnography in the United States, I share through performative writing my ideas, experiences, and reflections between the different moments of qualitative research, among which I am in a process of transition that stresses my biography, over cultures and paradigms. In this process, a feminine voice emerges with force silenced by data and traditions. The process makes visible doubts and contradictions of my own, mixed with subjective reflections on the self-construction of the professional identity of becoming a researcher in the academy. The importance of “raising the voice” in a globalized neoliberal context, characterized by capitalism in scientific production and the power that has an impact on research and methods is revealed. This highway traveled serves to stimulate reflection and debate among the academic community of qualitative researchers. Everyday practices are not insensitive to the people who make up academic institutions and spaces, nor do such practices have no impact on the lives of the researchers. I also write to annoy and disturb, to mobilize and question these practices and the relationships between researchers and research, confronting their inter-and-intra spaces with the neoliberal times that we live in the academy. This allows awareness and position with coherence and ethics before qualitative research as responsible social commitment and moral act.

Keywords

qualitative inquiry performance autoethnography performative writing self-construction professional identity

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