Performance Autoethnography: EM Not Afraid to Utter Their Emotional Truth

Abstract

In this performance autoethnography, the author uses the poetic language, rather than silence, to express the emotional truth associated with their lived experience. Exploring the convergence of multiple identities, they use Tweets as prompts to elicit deepest inner experiences, striving to elucidate situated knowledges that emerge from within. This creative-relational-and-performative process of producing an aesthetic text serves as a cathartic outlet, bringing forth the deeply personal, cultural, and political dimensions of being-in-the-world. The methodological consideration accentuates the significance of individual expression and encompasses the truth-seeking and poetical examination of everyday engagement with this (in)visible lifeworld.

Opening Note

This performative writing contains the strongest possible language that might be considered offensive by academic scholars doing conventional work.

[To partake in this performance, it is recommended that readers listen to Eminem’s (2010) song “Not Afraid.” On Recovery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5-yKhDd64s]

Narrator [V.O.]: There’s a game called circle and I don’t know how. . .¹ The truth is too strange . . . but the future is at stake. Please read carefully between the lines.²

An Asian figure in his late 30s steps onto the stage and proceeds to deliver a performative (ra)prose reading.

Interpreter of Lies

look at me, Me, & ME ♫♪♫

# So excited to share this news with all of ya!

# Delighted and honoured to speak as a keynote speaker [. . .]

# I can’t believe that I am appointed to be an associate professor.

# New open-accessed paper.³ Hot off the press!

lately, I have found a liminal space, where I “ride the same waves,”

hitting “the same shores,”⁴ granting the abject “I”⁵ a glimpse through a windowpane,

allowing me to see, so intimately, into a fold of “hard-to-handle lifeworlds,”⁶

so distinctly different from mine. I’ve never spoken to anyone about this, until now, until you

     I’m not afraid (I’m not afraid)

     to take a stand (to take a stand)⁷

The Way You Haunt My Dreams

after a l ~ o ~ n ~ g day, commuting back home,   a weary teacher,

with an ardent yearning,   desires to know   their own being & becoming⁸ that

requires courage in the dark to see  to seek solace  “through alternative ways

of seeing the world”⁹

     I guess

     I had to go to that place

     . . .

     to get to this one¹⁰

for a schoolteacher, their lifeworld is just a full day show

where gigs demand bladder control as a crucial role

at the start of the show, the intense cosmos of anxiety can be a little relish

to the point where (it is how they feel) they are on the verge of losing control of bodily functions.

(outsider might assume they all are into some kind of watersports)

never mind, in a few years, being in that role,

they all soon learned to sprint, achieving their goal, that is, finding relief

in the final minute of each show, for their bustling business leaves no chance for a respite and their obligations afford no late-night show.

when a schoolteacher’s life is on the line, implementing evidence-based practice is quite a c _ L—I ~ M — B and

reading your scholarly words, lofty and refined, while I navigate the practical realm, where realities bind.     while tentatively measuring the idea of distance

between yours and mine, a stark relation that troubles me day and night

it’s not the distance itself that leaves me vexed, but the fine

distinction lies in our distinct ways of knowing.

     he’s married to the game,

     like a fuck-you for Christmas¹¹

Hearing Voices

but “who am I?” one must inquire,

  in this unfurling

I become the voice of the self that I explore

  and explore the self that I voice¹²

when the world thinks you know the best, for your rigorous study shows the depths

that teacher burnout, & emotions fraught, and you’ve said it all. . .

continuously uncovering the same truth, about me, once in a while,

the truth that shines so bright and now

the personal knowledge ¹³ I once held to know     has slipped away,

  leaving me adrift in the currents of life’s sway,

no longer can I foresee my destiny or foretell my fate, as I find myself becoming a passenger, accepting what’s ordained by my day.

     admittedly, I probably did it subliminally for you¹⁴

and yet, beneath the surface,

a fire starts to ignite, a longing to be heard, to shine my own light,

for I believed I possess the ultimate insight.     as my inner world takes flight,

the “I” oft ponders in relation to “Thou,”¹⁵ within the intricate dance  in a world where tweets somewhat reveal, with all their might,

     a realization, a truth becomes clear,

     in life’s game, fairness is not always clear,

it is a disparity exists between “you” and “I”    that has made me truly fear.

     and don’t realize what you did¹⁶

Hopeful Openness

I oft wonder if teachers, with all their might, delighted to be tenured,

twit and tweet as they craft their lesson plans with full grant; and I oft ponder if they also feel thrilled as a keynote speaker to utter that same shit all day l ~ o ~ n ~ g

I now find myself compelled to ask them all, with a hopeful tone,

to what extent, have they prepared their class materials with care,

open-accessed, for each pupil’s share

so that all minds could partake,

for every pupil’s sake and knowledge’s fruits we could all take.

all can partake, you then say.   and hearing that, I am thrilled, I must say,

to have a say.   the world might benefit what I have to say

and yet, in seeking repair, it has become clear that the “I” is only invited

to become the dataset   for only you can mend the wounds that burden my soul,

    and make the human “I” once again feel whole

in the realm of authorship when you cannot call me by my name,

    it can feel like a betrayal

     you can try and read my lyrics off of this paper before I lay ’em

     but you won’t take the sting out these words before I say ’em

     ’cause ain’t no way I’ma let you stop me from causin’ mayhem¹⁷

The Scene of Desire

the power to express my emotional truth,¹⁸ which has nonetheless failed to reveal,

and the meaning lost in the realm of conceal.

concepts applied may be quite grand,

but in the life, the human “I” holds the upper hand. theories seem fine,

but in reality, I’m afraid they must align.

let’s bridge the gap and collaborate in kind, you then suggest

and I ask, no longer being studied as a mere trap, but as a vibrant mind

I shall envision we’ll weave knowledge together, hand in hand.

     you lied through your teeth,

     for that, fuck your feelings¹⁹

oh, the power of tweets, concise and clear,

each year, a new frontier for becoming-scholars to steer,

enabling minds to seek and adore, a platform where knowledge can truly soar. . .

alas, the immigrant “I” is but a piece to analyse, a fragment of the schema.

my being, dissected and studied, in the quest to comprehend,

the “I” is a human, yearning to be seen in full,

narrating their story, “the realm in between”²⁰

# Trust me, I get it. I didn’t tick all the right boxes to speak my truth, without rigor, without evidence, and now I even question my own existence.²¹

my tweet is soon dismissed, violently swallowed

by a new wave of twisted posts,   and yet the opportunity cannot be dismissed,

while I was immersed in the oracle of validation, a decree prevails,

   a self-estemm.app’s endorsement never fails,

(which suggests that the issue at hand is that of self-assurance,²²

as doubts arise and undermine my very expression)

with more self-assurance that my life matters,²³ my voice may waver,

and yet, through my performative silence, I strive to overcome, to be bolder and braver

as promised, the app can bestow upon me ways

  to conquer self-doubt’s dart,

  to ignite a flame of unyielding confidence, let it unfurl,

   and foster self-belief, a precious pearl.   more info here: →

     I don’t give a damn what you think

     I’m doin’ this for me, so fuck the world, feed it beans

     it’s gassed up, if it thinks it’s stoppin’ me²⁴

Circular Breathing

in this special place on earth, I find a simple truth but

in this open space, dare the abject “I” utter such concealed truth?

so rather than to disclose, I shall “pleasure” myself within this performative space,²⁵

no, I shall leave it for you to imagine yourself, breathing the truth

and keep you wonder and ponder about what I might utter. may you find the answers, uncover the ultimate truth, making the knowledge your own,

and embrace its allure, contributing to the field, let your passion endure.

for only you possess the power and grace, to shape, inspire,

and lead in this unique space

     and I just can’t keep living this way

     so starting today

     I’m breaking out of this cage²⁶

please forgive me that I defy your analysis,

documenting a perpetual way of pursuing my own self-understanding into the depths of my own egotistical soul.     in the realm of contemplation, where ideas freely flow,

I cannot help but utter my knowing, uttering from that objective space about this creative space, becoming a liminal space. . .

# Congratulations to myself!

For these lines we have penned, a masterpiece profound.

May my words resonate and leave a lasting trace,

Breathing the truth, in every word we expound.

but alas, my truth must be confined,

to a limit of 280 characters, how unkind!

in the age of texts, I lament,

my insignificant thoughts, in fragments sent,

in the area of knowing, my being reduced to snippets, oh what a delight!

     I think I got a tear in my eye²⁷

so my truth confined, out of sight, my depth reduced to brevity,

crafting messages, however terse, in the world of indifference,

I shall find a way, sharing my truth,

and submit my knowing piece by piece, come what may.

     I’ve had enough, now I’m so fed up

     time to put my life back together right now (now)²⁸

Sing Me a Torch Song

so here is the truth about the human “I”:

in the realm of linguistic navigation, as a non-native soul,

I oft must pause and strain, seeking the bilingual’s toll,

weaving syntax like a web, interlacing contradicting thoughts profound,

in this mental maze, I’m forever bound,

bridging realms of being and becoming, resounding with sound.

each utterance, a dance of languages,

with each line, navigating this othered space,

hoping to find grace, in this linguistic tapestry, I found my own place,

on this stage of winning Ellis-Bochner (in 2025),²⁹

expressing my emotional truths with eloquence and embraces.

each sentence, a seed of dualities, sprouts and unfolds, in its birth, soon becoming a tale yet untold, and yet all I see confinement of my being stuck in labyrinthine strands     transcending my self-aggrandizing art, uttering bilingual truths, embracing this striated space, ³⁰ unifying my own— connecting voices, one and all—

# Scholars, don’t pretend to be thinkers!

[都是文化人，咱们可不可以别装be?]

[wén-huà rén, zán-men kě-bù kě-yǐ bié zhuāng-be?]³¹

This is where the story begins, now,

or where it could be, from here.

     *** ***

  I’m not afraid (I’m not afraid)

  To take a stand (to take a stand)

    Everybody (everybody)

 Come take my hand come (come take my hand)

 We’ll walk this road together, through the storm

    Whatever weather, cold or warm

 Just lettin’ you know that you’re not alone. . .

   [A rap song continues to play on an endless loop]

     *** ***

Choir Acoustics

   ¹ Eminem (2010, line 50); ² Holland (2019); ³ Yan (2023);

 ⁴ Singh et al. (2022, p. 34); ⁵ Kristeva (1982); ⁶ Gloviczki (2021, p. 345);

 ⁷ Eminem (2010, lines 1–3); ⁸ Deleuze (1983); ⁹ Beattie (2021, p. 360);

   ¹⁰ Eminem (2010, lines 6, 8); ¹¹ Eminem (2010, line 28);

 ¹² Singh et al. (2022, p. 23); ¹³ Polanyi (1962); ¹⁴ Eminem (2010, line 72).

 ¹⁵ Buber (1971); ¹⁶ Eminem (2010, line 74); ¹⁷ Eminem (2010, lines 15–17);

 ¹⁸ de Sousa (2011); ¹⁹ Eminem (2010, line 42); ²⁰ Trihn (1991, p. 157).

 ²¹ Yan et al. (2023, pp. 262–273); ²² Schechter (2013, pp. 429–452);

   ²³ Ngunjiri (2020, p. 408); ²⁴ Eminem (2010, lines 19–21);

 ²⁵ Bright (2017, pp. 37–47); ²⁶ Eminem (2010, lines 64–66); ²⁷ Eminem (2010, line 76);

   ²⁸ Eminem (2010, lines 69–70); ²⁹ Ellis-Bochner Award (n.d.);

   ³⁰ Deleuze and Guattari (1980/2017); ³¹ Ruitenberg (2009).

My Methodological & Musical Notes

I wrote this performance autoethnography, out of need, out of frustration, out of this marginalization. In doing so, Norman Denzin (2017) tells me that it “requires an ethical framework that is rights and social justice based” (p. 8). In this context, an “ethical framework” means that it prioritizes respect for individual rights, advocates for social justice and addresses the issue of equity and inequality. The pursuit of doing, being, and knowing is then firmly rooted within a transformative paradigm, challenging prevailing forms of research practice in understanding the other’s lived experience. The content of this work—at least some of it—must fit within the category of something requiring an ethical thinking and moral traction, with “the way we are thinking about being-with,” a sharing of time and space in the “sense of partaking” (Salvo, 2020, p. 112).

Like most of my scholarship, I intend to write and think different(ly), exploring my lived experience of being othered, and advocating for what Donna Haraway (1988) called “situated and embodied knowledges” (p. 583). To do so, I have attended to what Norman Denzin (2018) urged me to consider: What this form of writing means for writers who want to perform work that leads to social justice. Drawing inspiration on Holman Jones (2007) Torch Singing, I produce prose poetry as an “insider text,” “create[ing] representations that illuminate the workings and abuses of power in culture, research, and representation” (Adams et al., 2014, p. 89).

The general theme of this performance centers around the specific subject, rather than power itself; they are intricately intertwined, nonetheless. Engaging with Tweets as generative moments, the authorial “I” performs resistance and desire through the poetic utterance of the Other’s inner experience. On expressing concrete lived experience through the narrative mode of writing, this inquiry foregrounds “emotions and bodily experience” as means and modes of understanding (Adams et al., 2014, p. 103). To exercise control over language and meaning, I choose to narrate “subversive,” “satirical” poetry in performance, challenging conventional assumptions about what the poetic looks like.

Through embodied subjects, the authorial “I” is then driven to amplify such an inherent power imbalance that exists between the researcher and their “subject” in the knowledge production. Through a discursive discourse, it allows me to capture the ineffable, telling a silenced story, “correct[ing] the inaccuracies and harms of previous research” (Adams et al., 2014, p. 89). Such exclusion with invisibility captures the idea of being hidden or pushed from view, which is a mode of expression, what Deleuze and Guattari (1983) considered, “a minor literature.” In doing so, my creative practice as research is not to be produced and expressed in the terms that an interpretation employs, but it allows the audience to hear an active search for hope. Echoing Shanahan (2023), it has taken me years to begin this prose poetry:

I have not known from where to speak; [as such,] it has taken me years . . . but to be a person at all, which is required for speaking [for the self], which is, the only thing I have ever wanted or needed to do, not for my ego, but to clear away all that had positioned me in the first place in no place (p. 78).

Within this performative space, a deliberate interplay of contrasting tones emerges as my “timid” and “polite” voice intersects with empowering lyrics of “Not Afraid,” blurring the “inner and outer borders in which and through which the speaking subject is [then] constituted” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 69). The musical tones of Eminem’s rap song serve as a captivating backdrop to elevate my poetic performance of this “minor literature.” Our differing lyrics and rhythms purposefully intertwine, amplifying the expressive power of “orality” in this matter (Kristeva, 1982, p. 40). This convergence brings forth a powerful synergy, where vulnerability meets strength, and the profound impact of these juxtaposed elements resonates with my inner and outer experiences.

Eminem’s fearless, unapologetic “not-giving-a-shit” attitude further fuels my performance autoethnography, allowing the abject “I” to “produce a reading which constitute[s] its own affirmation” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983, p. 14), and to experience “the power of desire [and authenticity], the hungry willingness to follow a voice wherever it leads” (Holman Jones, 2007, p. 176). To emphasize these contrasting effects, Derrida’s notion of “under erasure” is deliberately employed, scattered throughout the text, signifying that an academic space cannot accommodate such abject “noises” and its raw “authenticity.”

When I just embarked on this exclusive journey of pursuing my PhD last year, a fellow colleague kindly advised me to exercise caution in my words; that I “should” learn to protect the self, considering that my academic career is yet to unfold. Due to the intricate nature of the issues at hand, the authorial “I” needs to be cautious of what to “critique” in the dominant scholarship where expressing one’s innermost feelings are often considered inappropriate (are they not?). I now understand that delving into the depths of self-expression can be a more challenging endeavor than conducting research on participants (Liu, 2020).

In considering “the political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our days,” I have to think about the way the human “I” turns himself into a subject (Foucault, 1982, p. 785). On writing and life, as Anne Lamott (1995) put it, “there are probably a number of ways to tell your story right,” but “the truth of your experience can only come through in your own voice” (pp. 140, 166). Sadly, when I was an immigrant (scholar) in my early days, I was not brave enough that I had been trying to capture the truth of my lived experience “in some other person’s voice” or “on that person’s terms” (Lamott, 1995, p. 166). In doing so, I have nonetheless removed myself one step further from what I have seen and what I know.

In “Worthiness,” Shanahan (2021) states, “[t]ime is less a measure of what is, more a framework of control, a structuring tool” (p. 33). Over the years, I have been searching for the self in the becoming of the other. At the time, “I understand so little about progress” (p. 33). Eventually, all “that reading, writing, and thinking gives [me] expertise and confidence and will very likely point [me] toward something to do” (St. Pierre, 2021, p. 6). Echoing the voice of Vernon F. Humphrey (2020), I want to be heard and read differently: I want the reader to know me not as a “monolithic” person, but as a “complex person with many challenges and successes” in addition to, and beyond, my linguistic and sociocultural capitals (p. 377).

Within this poetic space, I tentatively present how the human “I” performs their identity(ies), an immigrant(√)/teacher(√)/researcher(?)/outsider(!), navigating their inner experience(s) and the multiplicity of belonging. Meanwhile, I am acutely aware that my being and knowing does not fit nicely into categorization or identification within any particular mode. Through poetic expressions, it then provides a medium for me to unravel those deeply buried emotions that have been suppressed for many years.

Following the advice of Pelias (2019), I draw upon my “literary skills to evoke the emotional and intellectual complexity” of being the subject(s) and deploy my “vulnerable, relational, and reflexive selves,” highlighting “problematic cultural practices” through my “embodied” and “ethical” sensibilities as a researcher (p. 1). Furthermore, I have taken into account “the relationship of form and content” when arranging the text(s) in poetic form or parallel structure; in particular, paying “attention to what form highlights and obscures, what feelings and ideas it inspires, and how writing structure connects with the experience” (Adams et al., 2014, p. 75).

The notions of being, knowing, and becoming are key themes of this performance autoethnography. From philosophical considerations, this autoethnography is firmly grounded in existentialism, seeding process philosophy and poststructural and feminist theories that transform the analysis of pedagogical encounters with others. The methodological conception of the self allows me to enhance the exchange of ideas between the “minimal” self—“devoid of temporal extension” and the “narrative” self—that involves “personal identity and continuity across time” (Gallagher, 2000, p. 14).

In many ways, I am fully aware of my engagement in research regarding the contentious practice of incorporating multiple theories and concepts. As Jackson and Mazzei (2013) state, “without theory we have no way to think otherwise” (p. 269). This promiscuous approach allows me to access different frameworks and insights that help shed light on my marginalized experiences, identities, and struggles of becoming the Other. In doing so, thinking simply falls apart, and such theoretical analysis allows me to “experiment with new representational forms” (Honan & Bright, 2016, p. 731).

Thinking diffractively with data then makes possible the entanglement between data, theories, and different people. Crafting each line, I stitch data and concepts into an aesthetic tapestry, weaving them with theory(ies) and repeating their rhythms. Each poetic line is rich in “affective traces that linger after the last word has been read, rolling around and asking to be interrogated at the intersections of [my] lived experience” (Silverman & Rowe, 2020, p. 91). In doing so, this autoethnographic performance (Spry, 2001), then, illustrates how data and theory can be intra-acting with each other, “through the knowing body,” producing a different kind of knowledge (Groth & Mäkelä, 2016, p. 4).

In addition, this poetic performance is self-conscious and self-reflexive politically, intellectually, and methodologically (Beltrán, 2019). While the abject “I” silently observes their lifeworld (collecting the data), performing the self in/through the text is an artistic form of “engaging in analysis,” bringing to the forefront the process of being and knowing. “Blurring the body and the page” (Silverman & Rowe, 2020), each poetic line creates an existential space to process the bundle of emotions the human “I” felt in relation to each specific context, where its being and knowing had been stripped away— “a blank subject, he [sic] would remain, discomfited . . . [and] always forfeited by abjection” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 6).

Reading, Writing, and Uttering Each Poetic Line

In the introductory lyrics, I establish the opening scene—we live in a society which is increasingly mediated by online communities—for instance, Twitter offers academics and researchers a platform (stage) to showcase their scholarly performance, if not their own being, and to engage with a targeted audience. This echoes what Denzin (2018) describes, “a site for conversation, a discursive method and a communicative format that produces knowledge about the self and its place in the dramaturgical society—the society that knows itself through the reflective technological gaze of the split screen tele-visual apparatus” (p. 146).

Reading between the lines, the discerning reader uncovers the persona of a schoolteacher entwined within the text, delving into the nuances and insights that unravel their struggle to comprehend this body of published “scholarly” work about the lives of teachers. The narrator experiences frustration because, despite their belief in possessing a wealth of knowledge and experience to contribute to the field of education, researchers often perceive them (teachers) primarily as sources of data, overlooking their potential for knowledge production (Yan, 2020). While that really is the basic premise of qualitative work, the “dilution of authenticity, ethics, rigor, Othering, understanding of lifeworlds and culture, all of that gets washed away by the success of the research tradition” (Allen, 2020, p. 12).

Being a marginalized Other, the human “I” is not mad but petrified, out of “a daze that has cut off his impulses,” causing “one word to crop up—fear,” and no sooner it “permeates all words of the language with nonexistence,” leaving out “a deep well of memory that is unapproachable and intimate”—the becoming of the abject (Kristeva, 1982, p. 6). Julia Kristeva understands that “there are lives not sustained by desire . . . [but] such lives are based on exclusion”; from their representations, out of such daze, the human “I” might be “existing but unsettled,” “merely an apparition but an apparition that remains” (p. 6).

Through creative practice as research, Tami Spry’s (2009) notion of bodies of/as evidence, forming the aesthetic of oppression and exclusion, necessitates performance autoethnography that is perfectly suited “to examine these affects because it can evoke that which remains unlanguaged” (Sutton, 2017, p. 463). In this regard, certain lines bear the imprint of my inner experience, woven into the fabric as participants in research projects.

To “give back a memory, hence a language, to the unnamable and namable states of fear” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 37), I frequently encounter discussions and fervent calls for collaborative research between teachers and researchers within the pages of published academic papers. Upon reaching out to some, not all, academics, the school teacher “I” quickly discovered that it is merely a facade, a carefully constructed theatrical performance designed to mask the underlying truth—I am not in the same league in their eye. Now I do not find within it the “delightful interlacing” of scholarly sentences, which unfold “my memory and that of my language’s signs down to the silent, glowing recesses of an odyssey of desire deciphered in and through the fashionable wordliness” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 134).

Some scholars in my field of research assert that “the participants as individuals who are capable of genuinely in investigative studies, participating and thus doing more than just simply generating data” (Egido & de Costa, 2022, p. 1). The stark reality, however, paints a contrasting picture that stands in opposition to their advocacy. While these events did occur, I am unable to disclose specific names and detailed contexts, as it goes against the principles of ethical research and the importance of obtaining consent in social science.

In Tracing Evidence, my memory, now, becomes an interpretation of past events (Shanahan, 2023). It is perhaps true, as Anne Lamott thinks, that “you own what happened to you” (Lamott, 1995, p. 28). She continues to suggest, in her TED talk, “tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better” (Lamott, 2017, 7:55). In the context of having my power (of knowing) taken away, it presents a challenging question of how to seek consent from those who have inflicted such circumstances upon me and to explore the reality of power and knowledge. (Can we be honest? Gathering data from academics to explore their behavior and conduct is virtually impossible, but the reverse scenario is often more feasible.)

To navigate this ethical dilemma, I utilize poetic inquiry as liberatory methodology (Faulkner, 2019), allowing me to deliberately present a text and its context with an air of vagueness, inviting readers to delve into their own experiences to interpret between the lines. One of the core ideas is to encourage each reader to connect their “personal (insider) experience, insights, and knowledge to larger (relational, cultural, political) conversations, contexts” (Adams et al., 2014, p. 25). In so doing, my poetic verses in performance serve as a medium to express and navigate these complexities, “embrac[ing] vulnerability” as a way to “understand emotions” and to “break silences and reclaim lost and disregarded voices” and, most importantly, to “improve social [and academic] life” (Adams et al., 2014, p. 36).

As readers continue to explore this prose poetry, they engage in a performative act that entails multiple renunciations of self, which are shaped by diverse contexts and the intricate dynamics of interpersonal relationships. Facing the abject, one might ask whether those articulations of the human “I” might become “inoperative,” not radically enough “to allow for a secure differentiation between subject and object,” and yet clearly enough “for a defensive position to be established,” leaving readers uncertain about the exact focus of the story—Is it about a schoolteacher, or an immigrant, the researcher or the researched?—“one that implies a refusal but also a sublimating elaboration” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 7).

Exploring the emotional truth, I can feel my heartbeat as I utter each line (Sutton, 2017). To produce the words on the page is to carry with them the imprint of this embodied experience. Owing to such ambiguous opposition, such as I/Other, Inside/Outside, my torch singing allows me to be deeply conversant with multiplicities and intersections of identities and positionalities. My sense of being is portrayed as “an opposition that is vigorous but pervious, violent but uncertain,” making my performance “constitute propitious ground for a sublimating discourse” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 7).

With a satirical pun, the analyst “I” needs to get the inner feelings off my chest, “allow[ing] one to regress back to the affects that can be heard in the breaks in discourse, to provide rhythm” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 30). In presenting the abject “I” in this performative act, I purposefully employed (in)explicit sexual references, such as “watersports,” “pleasure myself.” These abject elements, evoking a sense of unease and disrupting social and cultural norms, invite deeper reflections on the boundaries of self and otherness. As Kristeva (1982) explains, the abject has to do with “what disturbs identity, system, order [and] what does not respect borders, positions, rules,” and remains to be “the in-between, the ambiguous, the composite” (p. 4).

Through the poetic discourse, the performance of irony and sarcasm is woven throughout, deliberately employing intonational clues to create a sense of discomfort for academic scholars. Such sarcastic utterances is an aesthetic exploration of the knowing body, highlighting there is no clear-cut delineation when it comes to the understanding of being and knowing. These deliberate intentions allow me to find “a story form that most readily captures the feeling, movement, and potential meaning of an experience” (Adams et al., 2014, p. 75).

Within this generative space, Denzin (2018) states that “feelings, taboos and interactional lines can be crossed, identities confused,” to symbolize the depths of suppressed desire within this individual (p. 146). This also marks what Kristeva (1982) terms a “primal repression,” and the eruption of the real/unreal unleashes an unyielding torrent, shattering illusions and exposing the raw essence of existence. As de Beauvoir (1949/2015) joins to further explain, “[o]therness is a fundamental category of human thought” (p. xxiii).

If truth needs to be told, my sense of otherness is not singular and essentially different. As an immigrant teacher, I deeply engage with literature concerning this specific group of teachers to gain insights into their lived experience. The prevailing discourse often revolves around their linguistic and cultural competence, as well as the pedagogical challenges they face in their adopted countries (Yan, 2021). In the labyrinthine “scholarly” words about this minority group, I wandered in search of their knowing, only to find its elusive presence eluding my grasp and suffocating a desire of my own being. Such desire, as Deleuze views it, as a fundamental force that operates beyond lack or fulfillment.

To elucidate lived experiences, this performance autoethnography then “blends the analytic and the aesthetic,” allowing me to “frame the voice[s] as a site of identity negotiation” (Whitworth, 2023, p. 105), highlighting the messy yet inseparable nature of becoming to know—knowing and becoming as building concepts. As a series of “real” events that occurred jolts me awake, it infuses me with newfound clarity and an unwavering determination to pursue and advocate for self-becoming. Unsatisfied with conventional qualitative research, one that is “foreclosed by the repetition of the same” (St. Pierre, 2016, p. 8), the immigrant “I” refuses to be subjected to scrutiny and have their experiences reduced to mere data for academic scholars to extract “so-called” scientific knowledge (Yan, 2023).

The affective, desirous nature of becoming to know intertwines with the political exigencies of research and scholarship, compelling me to re-examine the language, knowledge, and discourse within the academic landscape. Writing the self is an act of transcending the confines of the dominant discourse and seeking its own path to authenticity and self-actualization. As such, this poetic inquiry is exploring my way “out of a profound sense of violation” (Nordstrom, 2023, p. 75), and the discursive process of writing my struggle itself is a form of self-care (Adams et al., 2014, p. 62).

Through the subversive, provocative voice(s), I also considered social satire as a means to explore the intricate nuances of Kristeva’s notion of abjection, “from which identity becomes absent” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 54). In the pursuit of its own becoming, the human “I” has “a sense of the danger, of the loss [of its being] attracting him represents for him, but he cannot help taking the risk at the very moment . . .” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 8).

Meanwhile, there is, in abjection, one of those “violent and obscure revolts of being” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 1), directly against the ways, in which power operates through knowledge and discourse. And this “production of discourse,” as Foucault (1972/2002) pointed out, is “at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers, to cope with chance events, to evade its ponderous, awesome materiality” (p. 214).

Instead of sounding myself as to my being, I do so concerning my place: “Where am I?” instead of “Who am I?,” as Kristeva (1982) reminds me, for the space that engrosses “the excluded” is “never one, nor homogeneous, nor totalizable, but essentially divisible, foldable, and catastrophic” (p. 8). To be hopeful, at the conclusion of this performance, I then touch Deleuze’s conception of fabulation, hinting that this immigrant scholar stands “on this stage of winning Ellis-Bochner (in 2025).” ¹

Fabulation, Deleuze argues, entails becoming-other, experimenting on the real while inventing a people to come, as well as an understanding of time (Bogue, 2010). In reading Hartman’s (2008) work, I borrow the notion of critical fabulation as a response to the lack of representation in scholarly writing (pp. 11–12). In 2025, I anticipate achieving the milestone of graduating with a PhD degree. I here emphasize the notion of anticipation, which not only motivates the self but also inspires the other to strive for excellence and pursue their own being and becoming. This personal aspiration serves as a powerful and transformative force, symbolizing my dedication and commitment to this line of work. The year of 2025 is thus used as a symbol of a forthcoming event, which is the reception of an Ellis-Bochner award as a recognition, to foster a sense of hopefulness.

By immersing myself in the right kind of work, I have gradually gained a newfound clarity regarding my future. When a people begins to take form, an interactive process emerges that connects art and the people in a political sense. “Only with art does it become empathy,” as Blake Morrison (1998) commented, “without art, confessionalism is masturbation” (p. 11). In my case, I consider “autoethnographic, poetic, narrative, performative works” a temporary form of art (Bochner & Ellis, 2002, p. 1). Through arts-based research, I found a movement of be(com)ing the knowing body and the self. This profound clarity and hopefulness has enabled me to perceive a multitude of possibilities and potential paths that lie ahead.

As Deleuze (1995) once ponders, “How can minority becoming be powerful? How can resistance become an insurrection?” In reading “you,” I am never quite sure “how to answer such questions,” even though I always find in scholarly works “an impetus that forces me to reformulate the questions theoretically and practically” (p. 173). With access to adequate resources, I utilize creative practice as research to produce art that is, to the best of my ability and knowledge, as close to the truth as possible to amplify the emotionality of being the Other. To this end, I claim that this poetic performative autoethnography is an innovative pedagogical intervention, challenging conventional paradigms, that seeks to resituate doing and knowing as an affective and situational process of be(com)ing.

The craft of writing, reading, and thinking about representation also necessitates the “particular, nuanced, complex, and insider insights” and thus “extends existing knowledge and research” (Adams et al., 2014, p. 103). By foregrounding my “standpoint,” my torch singing has made this standpoint accessible, transparent, and vulnerable to judgment and evaluation (Calafell, 2013). In doing so, this poetic inquiry serves as a foothold to project the influence of academic discourse and dominant research practice into the heart of the minority group.

Between conformity and resistance, the present “I” resists conformity, a simplification of human complexity; instead, it embraces the multiplicity of self shaped by the intricate interplay of contexts and the echoes of utterances of some real and some hauntingly remembered. Through an abject, yet authentic voice, this autoethnography manifests as an artistic expression that seamlessly blends sarcasm, truth, and a profound sense of longing. The rhetoric inherent in my non-native accent and language remains in stark contrast with the rapid-fire delivery of Eminem’s lyrics “Not Afraid.” Because, from ajar, the narrator “I” approaches the body of/as evidence so that it might speak for itself, “using it as springboard” to show “what eludes speech” when the human “I” becomes “of the excluded, the outside-of-meaning, the abject” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 22).

Finding the Self

After years of being rejected by higher institutions in the pursuit of research degrees, the immigrant “I” decided to self-train, choose to read, and write in a way that suits my intellectual and emotional needs. This grit and persistence eventually led me to a seat on this very exclusive path of becoming a PhD scholar in my own right. Now, in restless search of my own becoming, abjection should the second-to-least of my concerns, and “[t]he least of all should be polite society and what it expects,” as Steven King (2000) advised, “[i]f you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway” (p. 148).

In concluding this poetic performance, I swiftly used cultural satirical features through translation as philosophical operation (Ruitenberg, 2009), disrupting common sense meaning and understanding concerning the becoming of an abject. As a bilingual reader would quickly discern, the utterance, “Scholars, don’t pretend to be thinkers!” does not maintain the same meaning when translated from English to Mandarin. There is a nuanced difference in the meanings between the original sentence in English and its translation into Mandarin. Then again, I “inadvertently” unveiled yet another aspect of my identity, that of being Chinese, or could it be that I only know the Chinese language?—This is the politics of ambiguity.

Such cultural dissimilarities test the borders of politeness and truth in conversation, outlining the failure to translate the other’s utterance (or experience). In one sense, there is mimesis in terms of the structure of “knowledge.” In so doing, it has “not strayed too far from its logic,” as Kristeva (1982) states, “it is obvious that the analyst, from the abyss of his silence, brushes against the ghost of the sadness. . . Such sadness is the more obvious to him as his ethics is rigorous” (p. 30). On the contrary, these dissimilarities within orders of correspondence signify variations in expression due to diverse cultural nuances, “outlining the failure to introject that which is incorporated” (p. 40).

While shifting the concept into an interlinguistic register (of bilingual text), readers are then confronted to defamiliarize their ways of knowing—the language. In that sense, it causes “the sad, analytic silence” to “hover above a strange, foreign discourse,” “shatter[ing] verbal communication, made up of a knowledge and a truth that are nevertheless heard”; as such, it is necessary that “the analyst’s interpretative speech and not only his [sic] literary or theoretical bilingualism be affected by it in order to be analytical” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 30). The analyst can nonetheless perceive the imprint of that affect, participating in the performance.

The bilingual utterances highlight the profound divergence in connotations concealed. Such bilingual utterances problematize and expose the challenge of interpreting others’ experiences, prompting reflections on the accommodation of subversive discourse and epistemic diversity. The subtle dissimilarities test the borders of politeness and truth in conversation, outlining the failure to interpret the other’s utterance (or experience) through an outsider’s lens. By uttering abject truth, this kind of “poetic unsettlement” of analytic utterance testifies “to its closeness to, cohabitation with, and ‘knowledge’ of abjection” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 30).

In producing a bilingual text, I here emphasize the significance of epistemological diversity, ending this autoethnography performance with a philosophical question, that is, “to what extent, understandings become possible when we see A in terms of B?” This performance autoethnography prompts academic scholars to reconsider paradigmatic questions: When studying minority groups, can standard models and categories of analysis accommodate abject, subversive discourse?

Through this poetic performance, the abject “I” produces their emotional truth as a means to initiate dialogues surrounding the issues of incessant self-promotion in academia, dominant research practice within social science, along with the ethical and methodological considerations that intersect with the personal knowledge of the marginalized group. The authorial “I” prompts readers to reconsider paradigmatic and ethical questions: To what extent, can standard models and categories of analysis accommodate such abject, subversive discourse? Considering Kristeva’s (1982, p. 30) notion of “literary or theoretical bilingualism,” the translation of such innermost feelings could form liminal spaces, where epistemic diversity is unveiled and accentuated.

To make real positive change in our world, it is important to hear all voices and commit to cultivating their multiple pathways of being and knowing. Looking through the abyss, I gaze upon this academic space as “a betweener,” filled with frustration and sadness, knowing that I can never become an “unpretentious” performer within the ivory tower (Hartnell, 2018). Being situated at the intersection of multiple identities, the human “I” produces subversive discourse within this poetic space to generate a “betweener talk,” advocating for decolonizing knowledge production and a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable landscape of knowledge (Diversi & Moreira, 2009). This poetic inquiry employs explicit narration as a means to uncover the unsaid, as a kind of transgressive work that opens a liminal space for others to explore the dialogical self, articulating their own being and becoming.

The End of a Beginning

Because of my lived experience, I have learned the “subtle art of not giving a F* ck” (Manson, 2016), and not to “become the master’s tool” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 160). Through crafting, reading, writing and thinking, I have found ways “not to reproduce its grammar in what I said, in what I wrote, in what I did, in who I was” but to consider what I am about to become in my own right (Ahmed, 2017, p. 4). My writing has to allow me to breathe, live, and grow; as Ahmed (2017) states, the “personal is theoretical”; although “theory itself is often assumed to be abstract,” to know one’s lifeworld, there is a need to reintegrate theory, to bring it back into the realm of lived experience and restore its vitality (p. 10).

To me, writing otherness is not a representation of experience, but it is an embodied and sensory experience in itself. In this regard, this poetic autoethnography confronts and is further troubled by the process of the doing of the writing self. At the engagement between the creative, and the relational (Wyatt, 2018), I am constantly engaged where the inner experience of the self unfolds, becoming “an encounter [that] is not a confrontation with a ‘thing’ but a relation that is sensed, rather than understood” (Jackson, 2017, p. 669). Infusing writing one’s lived experience with poetry, this creative way of writing-as-inquiry highlights the “importance of individual expression, and poetical examination of inner and outer experiences” (Wu, 2021, p. 283). And yet, truth must be revealed in this “privileged place of mingling, of the contamination of life by death, of begetting and of ending . . .” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 149).

This is merely the inception of my abject utterance (Yan, 2022)—

Storm is coming and get prepared! ² (Nietzsche, 1883)