Teaching (through) autoethnography

Abstract

This text is about teaching evocative autoethnography in higher education. The main part entitled ‘On stage’ is a record of the presentation at the “Ideatorium” conference devoted to academic teaching. We decided to talk about the project “Autoethnography of Study” which Oskar conducted at the University of Szczecin. Instead of describing, we showed what had happened. Or maybe what seemed to us – me, the lecturer and Paulina, the student – what had happened. This is an example of performative autoethnography.

Keywords

Adult education didactics higher education performative autoethnography student voice teaching

What are we doing and why

This text is a script of performative autoethnography, which was presented in Gdańsk at the “Ideatorium” conference (26–27th June 2018) dedicated to academic teaching. We performed the fragments from the project “Autoethnography of Study” (see Szwabowski, 2019a; Szwabowski and Wężniejewska, 2017; Kaczmarczyk at al. 2020) conducted at the University of Szczecin. Students of the first year of MA studies in pedagogy participated in the project.

Oskar: I started this project because I was given the supervision over a group of students. I decided to bring autoethnography into the classroom. Because for me it is not a technique, but a part of experimental writing, there is not a set of rules, nor any criteria of how to organize classes or how to write. I know there has been a long academic discussion going on about the criteria (see Adams, 2017; Szwabowski, 2019b; Bochner, 2000; Ellis, 2000; Denzin, 2003; Hold, 2003; Richardson, 2000; Sparkes, 2000; 2020). Adams assumes that we need criteria –firstly, to know how to make the distinction between bad and good autoethnography, and secondly to know how to teach students (Adams, 2017). For me such desire for criteria leads us to the dark side of power (my polemic with Adams see Szwabowski, 2019b). I do not need tools for creating hierarchy and dealing with dead academics who are interested in gaining prestige. It is not my game. I do not need tools to teach autoethnography. I need autoethnography as a tool to live together in a better way.

I did this project, because as a critical educator (about critical pedagogy and autoethnography see Denzin, 2018, 2020; Kincheloe and McLaren, 2005) and a former anarchist activist, I wanted to change methods of knowledge production. On second thought I may be more of an anarchist educator (see DeLeon, 2008). I was dreaming about some form of cooperation which can change the university, our lives, the relations in a classroom, and the knowledge itself. Knowledge that will not be death, but life – seems to be embodied, dirty, full of joy, and sadness of everyday life. I was dreaming about a nonalienating way of knowledge production (Bochner, 2017). I wanted a changed relation in the classroom but also in the institution. By making the students co-researchers, I wanted to include them in the academic community from which they are excluded or even treated as a threat to the real university (see Jendza, 2020; Stankiewicz, 2018).

I started it all without knowing what I was doing. I had a few lines in my head, a flickering outline of the project. I couldn’t have more because I had to encourage students. And also I was trying to stop being a teacher and just become a facilitator. I just wanted to give them safe space for speaking, thinking, and being together (see Tombro, 2016). How we work, when we work, what we work on et cetera – all these things were discussed. We were seeking the best form of cooperation. My project had to become our project. And in a way, it became, even though “we” kept changing – some people came, other went. Paulina, who is still involved in the project, has been in it since the beginning.

I conducted this project four times. Each time the first-year students of MA studies in pedagogy were involved. Despite many editions, however, only the first group touched the collective work, and the first project lasted the longest. Until today, there are only a few of us (see W??niejewska et al., 2020; Szwabowski, 2019a) still participating in it. This script and text refer to the first time when I did this project.

At the beginning of writing this article, we wanted to give a typical report. However, after our first collective writing meeting we came to the conclusion that it would be a betrayal of the idea of our project. We needed more like “not-report” (D’Hoest & Lewis, 2015; Lewis, 2017). If our project was an example of “studying” (Lewis, 2013), we needed different forms of writing.

As both teachers and students, we should look for alternative forms of writing that interrupt, suspend, and render inoperative the fundamental logic of the research article that has been fully co-opted by the biopolitical knowledge economy. Such forms are tiring and tiresome. (D’Hoest and Lewis, 2015)

For us autoethnography is not a method of collecting and analyzing data, but the way of becoming (Gale, 2016, Gale and Wyatt, 2017), the way of living (Bochner, 2000) different togetherness in academia (P?awski et al., 2019). Autoethnography changes not only the style of writing, but also the relations in a classroom, the meaning of knowledge, the goal of production of knowledge and practice of learning. We do not write about dead knowledge, but as we write and create – we change ourselves during the process. We do not give conclusions. We provoke. We evoke. We show.

We invite you, to be a part of this process.

“Performative writing, then, takes as its goal to dwell within multiple perspectives, to celebrate an interplay of voices, to privilege dialogue over monologue” (Pelias, 2005: 419). “Leaving some empty spaces between words between sentences” (Guttorm, 2012: 601)”.

We hope, we write dangerously (Yoo, 2019). We hope that we use autoethnography not as a mirror, but as a hammer (Denzin, 2018) – “performance must also proceed beyond that of a mirror reflection to become the hammer that breaks the mirror, distorts the reflection, to build a new reality” (Madison, 2010: 12). Our writing as an anarchist practice that at the same time destroys and creates – dynamite and glue.

In general – “A performative approach to autoethnography foregrounds five intersecting commitments: focusing on embodiment, valuing diverse forms of knowledge, creating relationships, highlighting the affective and emotional in narratives of experience, and seeking change” (Holman Jones, 2018: 8).

In the classroom, at the conference – we challenge the dominant forms of knowledge; the established hierarchy relations, we are thinking through our body and feelings, and dream together about a better world, a better university. At least, we try to do it. We keep trying.

We attended the conference to provoke and reshape the dominant practice and meaning of didactics. We only wanted to show what was happening in the classroom during the project. It is always the event – you cannot plan it. It just happens. If you are lucky. Oskar failed as a teacher. And at the same time some strange space had been opened and strange forms of cooperation emerged from misunderstanding. Or maybe Oskar just failed and nothing happened – just the comedy of errors.

Meetings before conference

It is normal for us that we not only work on-line but also face to face. Face to face meetings are very important for our collective writing (Sakellariadis et al, 2008).

We are sitting in a room of the Faculty of Pedagogy on Ogińskiego Street. Dusk is falling outside and the only person that can be seen is a cleaning lady steadily mopping the corridors. We have laid our notes, previous texts – mine and my students, the ones we wrote together or published in scientific journals. We are sitting, cutting, putting all of them together. It must be presented the way it happened. There is a different version in each text.

Oskar: I am a bit anxious. I am always anxious when I prepare a presentation for a conference. I hate being on a stage. “What will attract their interest?” – I am thinking out loud. “Somehow you have to concentrate on the methodology itself. Monika said that those who participate in the conference are usually very practical: advising and counselling – it is behaviorism that prevails there.”

Paulina is listening. I – Oskar – am full of doubts. “It was not ‘technological didactics” (see “dydaktyka technologiczna” Malewski, 2010, see also Ruitenberg, 2017). I am not so sure about this, I could have told them not to do it. And honestly, after all, even if it was possible to show step by step what I was doing, it would not change anything. When I wanted to repeat this the following year I thought it would be better, but it turned out to be worse. I never know how I will perform and what is happening in people’s heads. You know, ‘Teaching is messy. I’m not sure that they will act’ (Waite, 2014: 267). Every single educational experience is one of a kind (Szwabowski, 2018, 2019c). Special. Although not always positive. And… Writing… writing autoethnography or else – is not technical skills, but it is about relations (Bloome and Katz, 1997). Paulina is listening, nodding in agreement.

She asks: “What was it? Tell me what the project was about.” “I’m not sure anymore” – there are conflicting interpretations buzzing in my head. – “You know, it eludes me.”

We, I, have written so much about this and I still don’t know anything. They’re just stories, different stories – and all of them seem to be true. “What was it for you?” Paulina is not letting go. “Honestly, how significant was it for you? It’s getting late, be honest, why did you start running the classes differently?”

I am nervously adjusting my glasses. I take them off, rub them. I want to say that I don’t remember. I am considering giving a mini lecture on the transmission approach to education, that it means treating university as a school, that it is training for a profession, passing on “dead knowledge”, making people conform to what’s out there, to neoliberalism… When I first came across autoethnography I saw its educational value (see Aleksandre, 2013; Barr, 2019; Blalock and Akehi, 2018; Boyd, 2008; Ciechowska, 2017; Dyson, 2007; Gołębniak, 2014; Sykes, 2014). I didn’t always manage to bring it out during classes. To teach autoethnography and to do this through autoethnography, with love and in order to change the world (Ulmer, 2017) – I was somewhat unable to meet this goal… “OK”, Paulina interrupts my thoughts, “Write about it then and we’ll see what comes up.”

I’m looking at the plan we sketched. “We’ve already written about this,” I’m whispering. This is all just yet another repetition. Although when I look at the texts, when I provisionally put them together, I start noticing meanings that I haven’t seen before. Each time while writing about the project we were creating a new narrative. Yes, I am aware that writing is not a neutral process (Denzin, 2009; Richardson, 2002). Our notes don’t constitute data which is going to become a path to truth when a certain approach is applied. They are traces calling up various memories, students’ voices, our shared narratives – they summon ghosts that provoke us to speak. “We could show it,” says Paulina. “Can you do it?” I shrug. It’s a good idea. “I’ll write a script, talk to you later.”

“Sure, let’s do it, we’ll create something new. It just might be the right way to do it,” I answer. Otherwise we’re going to engage in a narrative, the way of presentation which contradicts our assumptions. I’m looking at the sketch, at the traces of the standard lecturing method and the attempts to find a solution for a perfect class. Adapting to the audience. No – performative autoethnography is provocation.

“Autoethnographers are not only haunted, we haunt as well” (Herrmann, 2014: 329). Next meeting, the same room. We look at the script written by Paulina. First, each of us reads it quietly, to themselves. A while later, during the rehearsals I feel weird listening to her words, to the words of the students whose ghosts I have summoned. I have the impression that I had lost my power over the story, that the “I” in this performance is the image of myself that I would like to run away from. Did I really act the way that Paulina describes? She was there, inside, among the students, she heard voices that I didn’t, she looked at me when I wasn’t observing myself. I find it difficult to play the part of “me – not-me”. I do not like this image. As if the ghosts which Paulina had summoned reminded me of a suppressed and shameful story.

We’re smoking in front of the university building during a break. There’s a park in front of us. It’s a warm May day, parents with their kids are taking a stroll. “Did I really act like this?” I ask Paulina. She nods. “It wasn’t all that bad. Anyway – better than our first class.”

During the first year of my work, the first subject I got to teach was Didactics. I didn’t have a clue of how to conduct the classes. Anxiety separated me from my students. I perceived them as a threatening mass to say the least. Second year passed, then the third… And we met again.

“You looked tired, though,” Paulina adds. “That’s because I was,” I answered. “I had a crisis, that’s why I took on this project. I wasn’t able to run those classes the same way as before. If I hadn’t changed anything…, well, I felt I couldn’t do it anymore.”

Autoethnography not only allowed me to regenerate as a researcher, but also restored my faith in the purpose of writing and taught me a different kind of writing, an educational resurrection – something which exposed me to the beauty of education and allowed me to practice a different method of education and sabotage the neoliberal educational machine. Even though I was aware that I had begun this project while suffering a crisis, that, in the overall, for me it was the beginning of the process of becoming a different teacher during which the old habits still existed, I didn’t like the way I was depicted by Paulina. I was a bit annoyed that I have lost the power over the narrative about the project and about myself. It’s quite possible that this is one of the reasons for writing this introduction. To win back the narrative. It was always me who wrote the first and the last word. Power is difficult to relinquish. I am trying to withdraw, make room for her voice. I will follow her footsteps – I will learn from her. That is why I will have to force myself to be on stage, to do a different performance than what has been considered as appropriate, a normal performance at a conference. I am sick of normal.

“Ready?” asks Paulina putting out the cigarette. “Time for rehearsal.” I nod.

A while later. Gdańsk, the conference. While writing the script we thought of an ordinary and typical lecture room. What we entered was a huge theatre hall which reminded us of the ancient theatres. We did not know how we would move there. All our plans went to hell. Well, we didn’t have other choice but to improvise.

We listen to the presentations. Some involve multimedia, their structure is classical, all neatly organized, specific advice given at the end. There are no voices about the political aspect of didactics. There is no doubt that didactics is about giving information to students. And it is a neutral and natural practice of course.

“I’m scared,” whispers Paulina.

I pretend that I have everything under control, even though I feel like running away. During the break my hands are shaking, and we’re chain smoking. Our turn – soon. It seems to me that we made a mistake, are we at the right conference? We hear advice on how to move around classrooms, how to modulate our voice in order to keep the students in the state of maximum concentration. Somebody presents on how to use Power Point during classes. How much text put on a slide, how to connect slides with what is currently being said. Jeez…

I Hate being on stage

Some technical issues

The script, which is based on earlier notes, memories and dreams, was written by Paulina and Oskar. We take a journey – “from classrooms, to conference sessions, to the pages of journals” (Denzin, 2018: 47). We did not finish our trip. But we hope to do so. And we know, a travel like this changes the forms and meanings of our performance. In the classroom, in the conference and now on these pages – all of them are quite different stories.

After the classroom, after the conference, after the performance, we do something new. “This is not a performance text” (Saldaña, 2006: 1091). It is true that you do not see us, hear us. Maybe you will be more moved by our performance. Now, just dead words on the white pages. So it is not a performative text – it is a ghost of performance. But: “As traditional and conventional (if not conservative) as it may seem to you, I do not identify anything in print—even a play script—as a performance. To me, only live or electronically mediated embodied work, with thoughtfully crafted quality and artistic form presented in front of others serving as an audience, merits itself as performance” (Saldaña, 2011: 26). In conservative vision of performance Saldaña argues that we should give up with references (Saldaña, 2011; Teman and Seldaña 2019). Saldaña argues that the citations are against the art. We should think and act like artists. But artists sometimes add footnotes to their scripts. Moreover, the distinction between performance and the script allows us to make small changes. We added references after the performance to show what texts circulated in the classroom and in our heads. Some of researchers also add references in performative or poetic articles.

So, the main work was done by Oskar and Paulina. Monika joined right before the performance. Oskar and Paulina used Monika’s voice and body on stage. After the conference we asked Monika to write a few words about her experience during the performance. Oskar thought that Monika became part of this work and should be included as a co-author. We use but not abuse her.

Monika: We arrived at the conference together, we are colleagues, we see the world similarly. I was to be a spectator of their performance, but they got me engaged. Last minute, quickly, crazily. They said, “Here’s the text, a few lines, your parts are here – this person, that person, OK?” I suppose they needed me to make the show more attractive, so that the voices would not get mixed up, to strengthen the message. OK, I can help, I want to help.

I am a few different personas, my job is to pay attention to a text which is NOT mine, the thoughts aren’t mine either and I’m supposed to act all of these in a room full of people staring at them (I sit in the audience, I’m supposed to be an interlude, an element whose job is to interfere with the rhythm of the audience). I am the audience too. So many parts and functions.

The most interesting part of it is to be both an awed observer and a participant in what is happening on the stage – the external-internal battle between the two dichotomic worlds of students and teachers

I Find it fascinating

The previous editions of “Ideatorium” convinced me that a method is the only thing that counts. Nothing else. A wider context, some paradigms – they make no sense, just a method, the usual application of this or that. We shouldn’t focus on ourselves and certainly not on the students. Goal, action, effect, evaluation. Education as an action. And here come Oskar and Paulina… A completely different world.

The performance was in the Polish language, as was the project. Some things may have been lost in translation.

On stage

Oskar – the lecturer

Paulina – students

Monika – the dean, a professor, a student

Lesson 1

Topic: Autoethnography

A lecturing room. A student’s desk opposite a table. The audience is both: audience and students. Notes laid out on a table along with the book labelled “Sale. Free.” Behind the table – a large blackboard.

Oskar:

(Rustling through the notes, writing something on the blackboard).

I am skeptical of a university and the way it produces knowledge – a university being a gloomy factory, where nobody organizes joyful strike-like meetings. In such factories there’s no liberation through education, I thought. My own methods were useless as well. Typical, I might say. I would teach constructionism through the transmission approach. Or critical thinking through lecturing on the given interpretation of the works of particular philosophers. I wasn’t aware that through these actions I was, in fact, supporting the neoliberal machine. And what I wanted was a utopia, a different kind of education – I had to change something.

Paulina:

(Enters and says)

Good morning.

Oskar:

(Answers thoughtlessly looking at the things on the table)

Morning.

Paulina:

(Sits down at the desk. While taking out her materials she says)

I do remember this man. A bit mad or sick. Yes, sickness seems to be a more adequate description… something torments him, rips him apart… flares to be suddenly extinguished. He’s going to begin soon. I can see that he’s plotting something… that he has a new plan to save the world.

Oskar:

I’d like you to write a book…

Paulina:

Yeah, he’s mad.

Oskar:

I’d like you, us, to do something different, something meaningful.

A student:

It’s good to find out after these last years that what we’ve been doing so far is meaningless… Is that what you’re trying to say?

Oskar:

Well, no… actually… yes.

Paulina:

(To the audience)

This is a perfect example of how not to begin a revolution in thinking.

Oskar:

You wrote your bachelor’s theses and plenty of essays – for what? For yourselves? For a mark? Because it was required by your lecturer, thesis supervisor or the institution? Were those your words? Did they create you? Did that writing have any meaning? Were those words alive?

Let’s make the word live again, let’s bring existential meaning to studying. You know, let’s do something which won’t just be a pretense. We should focus on researching ourselves in the context of being a student, on writing and inquiring in order to create a change. Let’s create a collective autoethnography of study – together: a polyphonic and diverse narrative.

(To the audience)

I have a vision, I’m hallucinating that they’re gathering and discussing this idea – a circle of bodies and a never-ending debate. Dusk falls and the studying begins.

Paulina raises her hand. Oskar lets her speak.

Paulina:

Is it going to be graded?

Oskar:

All the criteria are political (Adams et al., 2015). They silence some people, delegitimize them, and legitimize others as reasonable voices, and so on. What I want to hear is your voice. I don’t have any tools at my disposal for grading. I don’t believe in the criteria. Forget about them.

(After some time)

So, are we going to do it?

Paulina:

(To the audience)

Uncertainty. That this is some sort of a joke and that it’s not about us at all.

Distrust. That this is some cheap experiment.

It goes against everything. So…

(To Oskar)

We agree.

(To the audience)

As always, after all.

Oskar:

Great.

(To the audience)

Yes, I know that they do not know what they are doing.

(To the students)

So, I suggest we plan our work.

Paulina:

(To Oskar)

So, suggest then… or even better…

(To the audience)

Suggest some other way of passing.

Not everybody likes writing after all.

And we know nothing about the expected type of writing.

How are we supposed to write it? Any particular formula? Any guidelines?

(Muttering unhappily to herself)

A template would be best.

Oskar (Approaches his table and leans on it – as if he wanted to encourage himself):

This isn’t a method which can be described in precise technical steps. It resembles writing stories. It’s giving an account. It depends on you how you’re going to narrate it, you have a lot freedom here.

(Goes to the center of the stage, Paulina starts taking notes)

Technically speaking, autoethnographies are idiomatic (Kubinowski, 2013; see also Winkler, 2018).

Paulina (Writing, says under her breath):

Idiotic…

Oskar (Louder):

There’s no template. You should follow your own unique voice, your own style. And you shouldn’t be afraid of experimenting. This is experimental writing.

Paulina:

How many pages?

Oskar:

It depends on the author – it should just make sense. However – the Minister of Science and Higher Education has a formal requirement when it comes to books: about 120 pages.

Paulina:

We’ll use a large font.

Oskar:

Let’s drop it for now. Things will get clearer as we go on. Read about autoethnography for the next class and think what you’d like to say.

Oskar stands in the Centre of the stage, Paulina besides him, but slightly to the back

Oskar:

The fatigue of being a machine spitting out the text – copying everything which has been already written: course books, articles, books. A copying-speaking machine – time passes, it’s OK. The fatigue.

I fight the fatigue when I speak, as if it was a process of excavating live words from a pile of dead ones.

At the same time: uncertainty. What do I really want to do? Some sketched words written with a shaking hand during a break, some vague ideas – write autoethnographic texts, be critical, be voracious… And they, they want instructions, step by step, they’re taught that a method is a little machine, a technique of accumulating, analyzing and processing data which makes their results true, proper and worthy of an ‘A’. I can see that they’re afraid to move. To gesture, to form words. Does it fit, does it fit the template?

Paulina:

This is weird, the whole class is weird. No surprise there though, as the class is run by a strange man in a strange way. He speaks strangely, looks strangely, sometimes walks strangely, it even seems that he breathes strangely. If he’s even still breathing…

We’re not sure anymore if it’s for laughs or serious. And we’re not sure what this whole University is about anymore… Even though, there’s some encroaching and unwanted joy coming, that this time it will be different…

However, we, students aren’t all in agreement. We’re not a mass. We all have different voices…

Paulina as students (Behind Oskar, once on his right side, once on his left, as if she was whispering in his ears):it makes no sense…it makes sense…

I don’t understand anything

All is clearis he pulling our legs?he might believe in us.is he looking for personal gain?maybe he wants to do something for us?a nice man…he doesn’t seem legit…he’s on something…he should take something…either crazy or sickfinally, somebody normal…

Oskar sits at the table. Paulina at her desk. They both look tired.

Oskar:

their faces are still blurred, a multitude of bodies without any expression

I do the speaking – during the first, second and third class – and I wasn’t supposed to speak, but to listen

I do the speaking – and have impression that the words elude themthat again we’re falling into the sameness

I do the speaking – and it’s so quiet

I do the speaking – without words

Paulina:

He speaks and speaks and speaks. It’s better to say nothing.

He already knows everything…

He might be asking. But…

He’s gone silent. He’s waiting… let him wait… It’s good to be silent in good company, but… it’s taking too long.

He’s going to give up anyway… (Looking at a watch that’s not there).

Oskar:

What is autoethnography?

Paulina:

I didn’t say…

Yeah, we were supposed to read…

One person read…

How to explain it…

Autoethnography is…

(To the audience)

The most important thing is to avoid eye contact.

Stare at a piece of paper…

Go through the notes…

He’ll give up eventually…

He’s going to explain everything himself…

And he’s going to explain it better than we can

Don’t think that we’re that bad. Somebody knows something. But it’s embarrassing, what if you make a mistake? Because you know that the one who asks, knows, and you know that he knows that you don’t fully know…

Oskar:

And I don’t know – I don’t know any more for whom I’m doing this project – who’s doing it and for what purpose – at times I think I’m the only one who cares about it…

The expected effect: to write a book – other compromises instead of agreements – disagreements mostly

Falling into the sameness

I think there might be too much chaos in my approach, something is wrong – it will be better next time.

(To the audience)

It wasn’t

Paulina:

Everything goes fast… even now.

Tick tock. The clock is marking the time of our education.

And what we need is more time to unlearn our way of thinking

So much time spent in school makes a human lose faith in education…

Because we haven’t become what we were supposed to be.

Because we haven’t become what we wanted to be.

Oskar:

I need time too – to become: to release myself from the instrumental and managerial way of thinking, from the wrong educational desire to organize, supervise, create something according to the template and purpose. The sameness haunts me like a vicious ghost. As if the whole project depended solely on me. I am responsible for everything, and they – the students – yet again are becoming a mass prone to manipulation. An illusion of a dialogue, an illusion of cooperation – I get struck by melancholy: the loss of the students as objects? Illusions: automobile (Lordon, 2010) students implementing scripts.

Paulina:

Not everybody wants to share their thoughts…

Not everybody knows how to speak

The culture of silence (Freire, 1993; Giroux, 1997; Stańczyk, 2010)

Allows to forget

What word is

Oskar:

Faces start to emerge slowly,

To what extent these are the faces that speak

Or objects to subjugate, to control – to manage them either softly or like Henry Ford and his military-like approach – in order to achieve the effect in the form of a book? – I hesitate, my outlook changes – sometimes I see it one way, sometimes another

Faces and mugs

Single voices, shy, in suffocating silence

And voices – back-off-man-I’ve-already-done-what-I-was-supposed-to-do

Paulina (Coming to Oskar with sheets of paper):

Waiting for the verdict.

Oskar:

I’m reading the first version… where are your voices?

Paulina(Indicates):

Here, there, there (she leans over). No, not here, here I lied.

Lesson 2

Topic: Voices

Oskar stands in the Middle of the stage looking around

Paulina:

I’m telling a story so that you’d give me a break. I don’t know why I’m here, why you’re talking to me and why we should talk. Why am I supposed to speak honestly? This isn’t a group therapy. Do I really have to give up everything to the authorities, even myself – under the pretext of some emancipation? Am I really supposed to open up in front of a stranger, expose my feelings and go into the most intimate areas, because this is what he wants – access to what is mine – private and intimate? This is not a community. There is no space here for our voices. How can you be honest in a crowd?

Monika as dean (Angrily approaches the table):

I have got some disturbing news that you make students write and publish critical texts anti our university. The prestige of this university is the most important, you do understand, don’t you? We’re getting concerned about all of this writing of yours, very concerned, if you know what I mean.

(She disappears in the darkness)

Paulina as a different student:

The university still exists! There’s still some place for the communal creation of knowledge.

Monika as a professor:

Their actual stories are somewhere else, not where you think they are. They’re not the texts you read. Their autoethnography consists of the strategies on how to avoid your project while participating in it. This is everything that happens besides it.

Paulina as yet another student:

A story is my way of sneaking out. Silence is my shelter, my freedom from the order to speak which later will be judged, weighed and considered by this Oskar in his allegedly emancipative class. He takes away my narrative, or, when I speak he transforms it so that it agrees with his thoughts on freedom.

Monika as a student:

You say that this is not my voice, that you don’t like what I wrote. What if this actually is my voice? That might be the way I narrate. That might be my existence. Even though you find it so ugly. You and your academic colleagues. Too shallow. Not subtle enough.

Paulina as a different student:

We finally could say what we really think.

Oskar (Embarrassed):

Why… why aren’t you saying anything? I really want to hear your voices…

Monika and Paulina together:

But we are speaking. (A moment of silence) Just listen… (Another moment of silence) What don’t you like this time?

Oskar stands as if he hears nothing

Lesson 3

Topic: Hallucinations

Paulina and Oskar stand beside each other. Scattered sheets of paper on the floor. Oskar and Paulina speak in two voices looking over the audience.

OskarPaulina

The illusion

That you do overlapping narratives nodding which does not mean agreement polyphony – because I did not take the pills because silence is cold silence is an insult refusal and resistance escapes into silenceand escapes into speech personal mystifications of reality

The illusion

Of being involved

Something is changing, something is transforming into something someone into somethingsomething into someone that politics, education, emancipation and science that truth that the talentless writing that illusion a few words between and some extended hands A lot of strands to cut A lot of

At the end

Oskar: At the end I think only about smoking a cigarette. My body. I do know what my body did at the stage. What I did. I think that in the classroom it was the same. My body always acts how it wants. My body, my emotions are always sabotaging the role I have to play in the university, in the classroom. I think that Paulina and Monika were playing much better. Not only were they more natural, but I didn’t see any conflict in their movements. In fact, I felt that they were controlling the performance on stage. That they controlled my body, voice, and mind. Now, I have to smoke, I have to come back to myself – whatever it means. But there were still comments from the audience. When will it finally end?

Paulina: Questions in my head: What will happen now? What did they understand? Can we sit down now? The faces in the room are rather cheerful and intrigued. And it begins, the microphone is circulating among the audience. There were no questions, only praise.

Oskar: And the typical complaints about students. We failed this performance. We wanted to provoke a different way of thinking about didactics. But we brought up stereotypes.

lead;And at the end someone whispered:

lead;“We have to deschool our thinking”

After the performance

Conclusions? Analyses?

It would be a new story, a new writing, and a new meaning(s).

Instead we left space for your voice.

After after the performance

About two years after our performance at the conference we – still – work on the article. I hope it will soon be the end of re-writing. I, Oskar send a message to Paulina. “Did you read the reviews? We have to change a part of the text one more time”. Paulina does not respond. Two weeks later I meet her at a party and ask: “Why did you not respond to me? Do you not care about the article?” “You do not care about the community” Paulina replies and adds: “You stopped working on creating autoethnographic community. You just want publish this article, and nothing more”. I say: “It’s because we did a lot of work here. And… I want to finish this. I have a lot of new text. We just HAVE TO finish this.” Paulina nods and says: “You have changed, you know.” To which I reply: “We JUST have to finish this”. Then someone asks me about something. I do not even remember about what. An insignificant conversation starts. I finish my drink and leave the party.

In the space between – in the nowhere – the spot of light blinds me. I, the Oskar, hear some voices. I am not sure what those voices say. I do not know where I am… White screen. Now I know. I am alone in my room. I sit at the computer.

I look at the remains of the previous versions of the text, at the ruins of meanings, the shadows of relations, the spectrum of ourselves and the words. And the silence when we are without bodies, without a stage – chained to the monitor and bored with talking. I look at the text and it seems to me that it is not my article. It seems outdated. During the COVID pandemic I just sit and speak to the computer. I do not see my students. I do not hear them. I am not with them. I just speak to myself. Time just passes. I hope it will be over soon. COVID. Or everything. My lectures for nobody. And then, I see this article not as outdated, but as something that is coming.

Now, in this dark time, dark thoughts are comingthat all words about provoking and changing the world through writing

All these words are just just an illusion

And I cannot write anymore

I just look at the screen

It is dark mute

Autoethnography – hammer – but only an inflatable one

“Hey, we have two weeks to finish this article” I wrote to Paulina again.

No reply. Silence.

I feel angry. Why does Paulina not want write? Why does she not care about the article? Why does she not answer me? Something has changed. While we were writing the script, while we were on the stage performing our autoethnography – we were living in these words, we were sharing something – perhaps a desire of changing our university, our academic self. Now, I have a desire to publish this article. Now it is, for me at least, a dead land of past words. Something that reminds me what was lost. The autoethnographic community is very precarious and the regimes of publication reshape the relations and the self. I remember my previous experience form other writing events – every time we start work with the reviews/reviewers we transform into a hierarchically organized factory.

The hammer emerges during writing, during performing – and I hope during reading.

For a moment – the same as our community.

Our community is when we perform – after – after there is a loss and a sad shadow of a world and words, a sad shadow of a lost relation of a different way of life.

Shadow of a loss maybe it is a hammer…

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Oskar Szwabowski

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