A Nomenclature for Critical Autoethnography in the Arena of Disciplinary Atomization

Foundation of CEAM: Autoethnography

As mentioned previously, the autoethnographer explores her or his own experiences by relating them to societal issues through an autobiographical-based and usually first-person written, spoken, visual, or “acted out” text developed through dramatic or literary-like “story” along with complimentary academic or scholarly argument; the effect of which is that the audience is required to “interpret” rather than “be informed of” the meanings and implications of the general theme presented at some point(s) during the enactment of the text (Adams et al., 2015, pp. 36-37; Bochner, 2017, pp. 73-75; Bochner & Ellis, 2016, pp. 75-119; Boylorn & Orbe, 2016, pp. 16-17; Spry, 2001, pp. 708-710; cf. Sughrua, 2019). Exemplifying key parts of this definition leads to the construction of what I would term critical-oriented evocative autoethnography (CEA), which can be considered a research methodology (M) under the umbrella of CQI. Certainly, CEAM-CQI is rooted in the above definition of autoethnography.

To unpack this definition, I refer to two autoethnographic papers. The first paper, Schutt (2018), narrates the author’s visit to Tel Aviv where he met for the first time the extended family of his biological father, an Israeli, whom he had discovered several years previously. As mentioned above, autoethnographies such as Schutt’s (2018) paper are primarily story-oriented or dramaturgical and secondarily academic or scholarly. Before taking up the matter of the dependency of the scholarly on the dramaturgical and relating it to Schutt (2018), let us first ponder what is meant by “dramaturgical” and “scholarly.”

“Dramaturgical” refers to a written, oral, acted out, or displayed (e.g., as in a photograph or art exhibition) representation of a “real,” “imagined,” or “combined real and imagined” happening, occurrence, or event which is based on time, place, and action engaged in by a character or characters and/or the narrator and which hence takes the form of a “story” directly utilizing or somehow evoking literary-like conventions such as scene, dialogue, and characterization (Barkhuizen, 2008, p. 232; Sughrua, 2016, p. 14). In contrast, academic or scholarly writing is usually noncontingent in that it does not directly or immediately evoke a specific lived situation. For instance, Swales’s (1990) classic example holds that the phrase “[a] sample of 130 reprint requests” is nonsituational and nonsensorial and hence “academic,” whereas the phrase “[m]y own and Bob’s down the corridor” is more immediately situational, sensorial, or contingent and thus “non-academic” and leaning to the dramaturgical (p. 124). Of course, exceptions abound, such as a personalized anecdote used as a “major support” developing a nonsituational “topic sentence” of a paragraph within an academic article, and some genres such as the “persuasive essay” may seem stuck on the middle ground between the dramaturgical and the scholarly. However, in general terms, scholarly or academic writing can be said to present a nonsituational and nonsensorial account, to utilize a dominantly third-person “abstract nominal style” of writing, and to often rely on bibliographic references (Canagarajah, 2002, pp. 109-112; Richards & Miller, 2005; Swales, 1990).

This academic writing in Schutt’s (2018) autoethnography appears in the third paragraph of the introduction and then throughout the penultimate section that serves as a theoretical-based and referenced “discussion” supported by Levant history, cinematic studies, and narrative theory. The rest of the paper, the bulk of the text, is the story or dramaturgical part as a type of travelogue. This consists of chronologically sequenced journal entries that are interspersed with photographs and that recount Schutt’s visit to Tel Aviv. ⁶ During his visit, Schutt spends time with his biological father and the father’s family in different places and locales where Schutt senses salient indications of the Palestinian and Israeli conflict. This story or travelogue intersects with the scholarly or academic part in the penultimate section of the paper where the sociopolitical tensions felt by Schutt are reflected upon within a theorized and referenced discussion. As seen here in Schutt (2018), academic writing in autoethnography is subordinate to or dependent upon the dramaturgical dimension of autoethnography. Not only do the scholarly parts occupy much less textual space than the dramatic parts in terms of word count but also the scholarly parts are not able to develop the main theme of the autoethnographic paper on their own. In other words, the scholarly parts introduce, reinforce, or conclude that which is rendered in the story or dramaturgical dimension of the paper, whereas the dramatic part carries the weight of the paper by engaging in performativity. This term, performativity, relates to rhetoric as well as culture. Although both types of performativity overlap, I here look on performativity from the rhetorical perspective, which refers to the dramaturgical or storylike enactment of an academic or social issue or theme that somehow has been made known to the readers during the enactment or performance (Adams et al., 2015, p. 88; Carver & Lawless, 2009, pp. 13-15; Denzin, 2018b, pp. 7-8; Miller & Pelias, 2001, pp. v, xii). ⁷

When the audience has already been made cognizant of an intended topic such as the hegemonic effects of standardized assessment in elementary education or “receives direct indication of this topic “or infers cues” of it “at the onset or during the moment it reads, hears, observes, or otherwise experiences the story” or dramaturgical event; when the story or event is “purposefully set on demonstrating, rendering, or otherwise acting out (as opposed to directly explaining or expositorily developing)” this topic; when the audience reciprocates by sensorially interpreting (as opposed to being “informed of”) this topic; and when these conditions are met, there occurs rhetorical performativity (Sughrua, 2016, p. 6). This performativity is provided by the dramaturgical dimension of the autoethnographic paper and given accentuation by the academic or scholarly dimension. In Schutt (2018), for example, the dramatic-based travelogue allows the author Schutt, Australian by nationality and part-Israeli by biology, to “expos[e] a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract, and resist cultural interpretations” (Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p. 739; in Bochner & Ellis, 2016, p. 65) regarding the social and political tensions palpable to him during his visit to Tel Aviv. As Schutt, through his journal entries and photographs, continues to focus “outward on social and cultural aspects” of his “personal experience” and “then . . . look[s] inward” (Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p. 739), he encounters a self-identity clashed between “mostly outsider” and “vaguely insider” as to his immediate surroundings and newly discovered familial connections. This awareness relates to Schutt’s (2018) theme as mentioned at the end of the theoretical discussion section and as regarding the need “to tell the story, to order the fragments into coherent experience” so as to achieve “reinvention and new life,” especially in moments of personalizing the sociopolitical strife of others (p. 76).

This stated theme, however, seems more specific and articulated than does the awareness that has risen from the “drama” or “story” in the form of the Tel Aviv travelogue. Consequently, Schutt momentarily steps out from his journal and photographs to situate his awareness of having an oddly felt and emergent “insider” identity within the penultimate section where he “academically” (so to speak) discusses his identity conflict in historical, cinematic, and narrative terms. This brief foray into the “scholarly” further defines and sharpens Schutt’s identity awareness, at least enough so that Schutt is able to return to the dramaturgical dimension that centers on the two final journal entries covering his last day in Tel Aviv when he goes to a flea market, purchases a musical instrument (an Oud), returns to his place of accommodation to pack his suitcase, reluctantly breaks the slender wooden neck of the Oud so as to fit the instrument into his suitcase, and then leaves for the airport to board his return flight to Australia. In this final part, Schutt (2018) brings the enactment or performance toward its close, whereby the Oud alludes to the act of storytelling as a way to confront one’s often fractured and dichotomous outsider-insider identity as related to the intersectionality of nation, geography, and family within the nuanced atmosphere of prolonged sociopolitical tensions such as that of the Palestinian and Israeli conflict. As if Aristotelian falling action, Schutt’s act of unpacking the Oud from his suitcase upon his return to his home in Australia calmly brings the enactment of his outsider-insider identity into a close congruency with his previously stated theme. Once he unpacks the Oud, Schutt (2018) glues the neck back on the hollowed body, hoping to make the Oud “sing” again, and thus suggesting that one’s identity, when fractured along the line of oppressor and oppressed, can be mended through compassion (pp. 76-77). It is important to note, however, that this rhetorical performance of the intended theme is aided by the scholarly dimension, though the presence of that dimension is downplayed in the paper—as is common in most autoethnography.

Take, for example, Kien’s (2013) autoethnographic paper titled “The Nature of Ephinany.” This paper begins by recounting a graduate seminar in which the author had been enrolled and had learned from the professor, Dr. Norman K. Denzin, “that like James Baldwin, we must go back to that moment of pain, like James Baldwin did, reexamine it, return to it again and again, turning it over, reexamining it, challenging it, understanding it, forging new paths forward from it” (Kien, 2013, p. 578). This recounting of the seminar, comprising the entire first paragraph of the paper, marks the sole presence of the scholarly or academic dimension. Evoking a visual sense of the seminar room while paraphrasing Dr. Denzin’s point about heeding novelist Baldwin’s practice of returning to and confronting painful moments of life, Kien actually engages in the “story” dimension in the anecdotal form of a classroom critical incident. Following the anecdotal nature of this opening paragraph, Kien refers to Denzin, paraphrases from him, but does not academically cite the paraphrase as having been taken from the “APA”-recognized source consisting of a seminar or conference proceeding. Nonetheless, many readers, myself included, would most likely think of the reference citation “(Denzin, 2003; referring to Baldwin, 1956/2001)” (i.e., at least the italicized part) and hence see it as implicit in the anecdote, much like the relative conjunction “that” which is seen or felt to be present in the space between a noun and a contracted adjective clause, as in “The book I read is a novel.”

As a result, a single reference cite half-shrouded in dramaturgy comprises the scholarly dimension of Kien’s (2013) autoethnography—indeed, a quite slight dimension when contrasted with that of Schutt (2018) consisting of a three-page discussion section. Whether brief or extended, whether at the beginning, middle, or end of the text, whether at one or multiple moments in the text, the scholarly or academic writing is at the service of the story or dramatic part of the autoethnography. In Kien (2013), for instance, the above-mentioned academic dimension in the first paragraph stresses the need to confront painful memories and also asserts the presence of this issue in ethnographic studies and literary works vis-à-vis Denzin and Baldwin. This legitimizes the intended theme, as stated in the second paragraph. In this paragraph, a type of neutral or third space that remains held apart from the scholarly and dramaturgical and that resembles the procedural, Kien (2013) directly states that the individual “MUST” reconcile with each painful moment in her or his past because each of those moments “lives on inside its human host, inside the anatomical brain, as its own ‘Being’” and because “[t]o the host,” the painful moment “is immortal” . . . [a]nd sometimes it takes possession of the body” (p. 578, capital letters in original).

This theme now having been introduced and validated by the previous scholarly dimension, Kien (2013) then takes up the dramaturgical dimension and stays within it until the end of the paper, so as to rhetorically perform (cf. above) this theme stressing the mandate to overcome or at least learn to live with painful experiences. The performance in Kien (2013), as described by Sughrua (2016, pp. 33-34), resembles a “Beckett-like one-act play.” At the start and end of the dramatized paper, Kien (2013) is seen lying on his bed at 6:30 a.m., wide awake. As the paper begins, and while he lies on his bed, Kien (2013) remembers three past moments, going back and forth, or down and up in time, narrating each moment, as if speaking out to the theater audience in a one-person monologue while lying prone on his back in the bed that is situated on the stage. In his monologue, Kien (a) returns to a past moment of presenting a paper at an academic conference; (b) goes further back to reliving the experience described in the conference paper, that of sitting at a table in an outdoor café in Seoul, as a Korean woman in the company of an American soldier walk past, while he (Kien) oddly senses that the soldier somehow poses a danger for the woman; (c) goes further back in the past to when he was informed of his sister’s murder at the hands of her domestic partner; (d) moves forward or up in time to, again, his presentation of the paper at the conference; (e) drops back down again to the Seoul scene; and (f) returns again to the paper presentation, which relates how his impression that the Korean woman faced an impending danger and that he himself was unable to prevent it was influenced by the trauma he felt over his sister’s murder (Kien, 2013; also cf. Sughrua, 2016). After recounting the paper presentation, Kien’s monologue returns to the present moment of Kien lying on his back in bed. He tells the audience that he “MUST” dwell in the pain and agony of having lost his sister to death and knowing he was unable to prevent her murder, and that now coming to grips with this imperative of having to live with the pain could be an epiphany or revelatory moment because by “remember[ing], . . . miss[ing], . . . lov[ing], . . . [and] writ[ing] about her,” he at least figuratively will “‘not let her die again’” (Kien, 2013, p. 584, capital letters in original). In other words, embracing the unrelenting pain of the past can offer its own type of liberation, when there is no other alternative, and for that reason, we need to reconcile and channel this pain the best we can, as stated in Kien’s (2013) statement of purpose in the first paragraph.

As implicit here in Kien’s (2013) autoethnography as Beckettesque theater, in Schutt’s (2018) autoethnography as journal- and photograph-based travelogue, and in the multi-referenced definition (above), “autoethnography provides rare discursive space for voices too often muted or forcibly silenced within more traditional forms of research” (Allen-Collinson, 2013, p. 282) such as the traditional empirical-based study reported by way of the research article adhering to the IMRD format (introduction–method–results–conclusion) or its variants such as ILMRD (introduction–literature review–method–discussion; Bennett, 2011; Canagarajah, 2002; Sughrua, 2016; Swales, 1990). As an alternative repertoire of academic research and writing practice, therefore, “[a]utoethnography is an expression of the desire to turn social science inquiry into a nonalienating practice, one in which the researcher is not required to underplay her or his “own subjectivity” and “can become more attuned to the subjectively felt experiences of others” (Bochner, 2013, p. 53). Thus, being both “self and socially conscious” (Holman Jones, Adams, & Ellis, 2013b, p. 23) as well as evoking “the interconnectedness of the human experience” (Boylorn & Orbe, 2016, p. 15), autoethnography is set on “opening up and democratizing the research space to those seeking to contest hegemonic discourses of whatever flavor” (Allen-Collinson, 2013, p. 282).

Autoethnographic Types

As developed in the previous subsection, autoethnography is dramaturgical with a dependence on the scholarly. It is also performative in the rhetorical sense, and often it is social justice–oriented. ⁸ As such, autoethnography has many different forms. Although the forms may overlap, each is invoked by a particular descriptor. Below seem the most common:

This listing merits four clarifications. The first is that the previous list of autoethnographic types is not exhaustive. Although the 13 types described above seem the most common, there are various other types such as community (Adams et al., 2015, p. 89). Second, each type asserts its own defining features while not being exclusive from the other types. For example, interpretative (No. 7) defines itself by intersectionality and performative (No. 11) by motion, but both share the same sense of temporal cultural situadedness, while being enmeshed in many of the other types. Third, for this reason, an autoethnographic work can be seen as corresponding primarily to one or multiple types although one or two types in particular may lead the way. For instance, in my opinion, Schutt’s (2018) autoethnographic paper is mainly interpretative and secondarily betweener and decolonial with tendencies of layered, and Kien’s (2013) paper is primarily both Mystory and personal and secondarily reflexive. This, of course, is open to interpretation, and the same paper may be seen in different ways from reader to reader, and sometimes regardless of the autoethnographer’s own categorization of her or his paper. This last brings me to the fourth and final clarification, which is that a disconnect between the autoethnographer and her or his readers on the type of autoethnography employed is a common occurrence. For example, in the case of Chew et al. (2015), one of the two examples of Indigenous autoethnography cited in the above list, the co-authors directly categorize their paper as a collaborative autoethnography treating an Indigenous-related theme. I, as reader, however, would differ.

I see the 2015 paper as first and foremost an Indigenous autoethnography and secondarily collaborative. This is not only because the three co-authors directly and proudly refer to themselves as heritage speakers of North American Indigenous languages (Chew: Chickasaw; Hicks Greendeer: Mashpee Wampanoag; and Kkeliia: Yerington Paiute as well as Washoe) but also because the theme calls for Indigenous-background graduate students to use their heritage languages in their study programs such as assumedly in the writing of their dissertations (Chew et al., 2015, p. 75). I have the impression that the timeliness and urgency of this theme, in the face of current Indigenous language endangerment in the Americas (e.g., Coronel-Molina & McCarty, 2016), seems well-served by profiling indigeneity as a primary autoethnographic type in this paper. This, certainly, is not to say that I would even pretend to represent myself as knowledgeable of Indigenous issues. Rather, I simply am trying to account for my reader-impulse to downgrade the descriptor collaborative from main to complementary position and to place Indigenous alone in the main slot, apparently contrary to that intended by co-authors Chew et al. (2015).

This potential for disagreement among the reader and author as to the primary type(s) of a given autoethnographic work is one key characteristic of “naming” or nomenclature in autoethnography. Furthermore, as mentioned above, although the types may overlap within the same work, and although the work may seem describable by a plurality of types or names, most often one name, or perhaps two, will jockey into position to control the work. In addition, nomenclature in autoethnography can be reasonably approximated (e.g., the above list of 13 types); however, this nomenclature process remains fluid and ongoing, with new types continually being named to depict extant as well as emergent autoethnography such as spinstorying/generative (Alexander, Moreira, & Kumar, 2015).

These Autoethnographic Types as a Consensus Addressed by “Analytical” and “Evocative”

Assigning the just-mentioned descriptor spinstorying/generative to Alexander et al.’s (2015) multi-voiced autoethnographic work, and the above 13 descriptors to a large swath of current authoethnography, involves, as Bourdieu (1991) would claim, “the great collective rituals of naming and nomination” bound up with “a certain claim to symbolic authority as the socially recognized power to impose a certain vision of the social world” (p. 106). Indeed, such depths of nomenclature seem quite difficult to explore. For instance, with regard to the above-mentioned autoethnography authored by Chew et al. (2015), what authority do I, a third-generation Irish-American, assert or project by upgrading the descriptor “Indigenous” from the sideline position as “subject matter” to the overriding marquee position as “type,” even though such maneuver is apparently incongruent with the Indigenous authors’ intentions? Who am I to insinuate that the authors’ primary concern with the process or functionability of autoethnography, as perhaps seen in their choice of “collaborative” as a main descriptor, seems frivolous? Who am I, therefore, to imply that the aesthetic quality of autoethnography is less important than getting the message out on socially critical issues? Furthermore, if I were to be seen as a legitimate conveyor of the previous messages, then how would my headlining the autoethnographic category “Indigenous,” as an “act of naming,” do its very small part in “help[ing] to establish the structure of this world” (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 105)?

I would hazard to answer that I am guided by a desire to re-empower or further-empower Indigenous groups, and therefore that my headlining the autoethnographic category “Indigenous” is an act of “legitimate naming” (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 239, italics in original), at least to the extent that it is validated by the ideology of decolonialism (Dussel, 1993, 2000; Mignolo, 1995/2003, 2000/2012) as well as the premise that a non-Indigenous actor such as I can defend Indigeneity (Smithers Graeme, 2014). But I cannot be sure that this intention, having resulted from my nomenclatural elevation of the autoethnographic type “Indigenous,” would necessarily resonate as sincere with the Indigenous authors of the autoethnography in question or other readers. I would hope so, although there is no guarantee. For instance, might I be taken as one mostly concerned with inflating his own savior-complex so as to rid himself of colonial guilt? I would hope not. But who can assure the view of the beholder? For as discussed above, the effects of nomenclature can be oppressive, liberating, or ambivalent, and it seems difficult to predict which. In other words, the act of naming is wildly subjective. What seems given and undeniable, however, is that naming results in divisions which, by virtue of being conjured up, seek to represent an established order or status quo (Bourdieu, 1947/1991), as that seen in the 13 common types of autoethnography (cf. above list). I would hence prefer to direct myself more to the constant than the variable: that is, the looming reification of the fissures created by the naming of categories.

These resultant “divisions,” such as the 13 autoethnographic types (above), give “the objectivity of public discourse and exemplary practice to a way of seeing or of experiencing the social world that was previously regulated to the state of a practical disposition” (Bourdieu, 1947/1991, p. 130). Referring to this pre-divided condition of “practical disposition” as a “tactic and often confused experience” marked by “unease” and “rebellion,” Bourdieu (1947/1991) suggests a state of innovation and disruption (p. 130), such as that had by autoethnography when responding to the crisis of representation in the 1990s (cf. above; below). Transitioning from renegade innovator in the 1990s to an “instituted group” at least by the year 2000 (above), autoethnography has achieved a “consensus, a fundamental agreement concerning the meaning or sense” of itself, “which is based on the agreement concerning the principles of di-vision” (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 131). This is seen in Table 1 (above), which includes the 13 representative types of autoethnography from the previous list as well as the other two types identified in the paragraphs subsequent to the list. Furthermore, the table kicks off the effort of this paper to propose a renewed nomenclature for autoethnography. It is the first of five stages to be presented.

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Table 1.

In-Progress Nomenclature of Autoethnography: Divisions: Stage 1 of 5.

Autoethnography
Betweener	Blackgirl	Collaborative	Community
Decolonial	Duo	Indigenous	Interpretative
Layered	Meta	Mystory	Performative
Personal	Reflexive	Spinstorying/generative	Other types

Identifying the same named types of autoethnography from above, Table 1 shows an approximation of the divided territory of what can be considered contemporary autoethnography. Although the autoethnographic types or territories may overlap, each territory becomes a “force of orthodoxy” contributing to the general “established order” of autoethnography (following from Bourdieu, 1947/1991, pp. 127, 131). Any new or revisited innovation, therefore, would need to address this already-set mosaic of related “orthodoxies,” perhaps subverting them, or at least enlisting them. Enter “analytical” and “evocative,” names onto themselves, which vie for a place among these already-named autoethnographic types or territories.

The Deciding Factors: Method and Methodology

Both the analytic and evocative camps easily enter the autoethnographic field depicted in Table 1. Whether the camps take up a leadership position by heading up some of the autoethnographic types or a membership position by serving as one more type to be added to the list seems to depend, however, on the manner in which the camps engage method as opposed to methodology. I discuss this below. First, though, allow me to briefly synopsize my previous description of ANAT and EVAT. As explained, both ANAT and EVAT make use of the author-autoethnographer’s life experiences and memories “as primary material” (Chang, 2013, p. 103), as do Kien’s and Schutt’s papers (2013 and 2018, respectively) which depict the autoethnographers on visits to Seoul and Tel Aviv, respectively (cf. above). The difference is that ANAT directly labels this personal material as “data” (Chang, 2013, p. 103), while EVAT considers it a type of deep background source and inspiration to the unfolding drama, much as poetry or fiction would. Furthermore, autoethnographers in the ANAT camp “highlight their obligations as ‘story analysts’” (Bochner & Ellis, 2016, p. 62) and produce papers resembling IMRD in format (above), whereas those in the EVAT camp act as “story performers” in the rhetorically performative sense and maintain their text in its overall dramaturgical form (Bochner & Ellis, 2016, pp. 75-119). Finally, ANAT complements its personal experiential data with other data sets such as “memorabilia, . . . official records, photos, interviews with others, and on-going self-reflective and self-observational memos” (Chang, 2013, p. 108), whereas EVAT, taking the “researcher [’s] own experiences as the source from which to investigate a particular phenomenon” (Méndez, 2013, p. 282), avoids data sets altogether and relies mostly, if not completely, on the dramaturgical story along with its conceptual and theoretical support.

Despite this contrast between the ANAT and EVAT, some autoethnographers use a mixture of the two and thus identify their work as “analytic/evocative.” An example is Tomaselli (2018), who describes his work as a “wandering dramatic and theoretical narrative that includes empirical data such as interviews and fieldwork diaries which, being ‘experientially located in the personal,’ fills in the void between the apparent cognitive and affective tendencies of the analytical and the evocative, respectively” (pp. 170-175). Notwithstanding “analytic/evocative” autoethnography such as that of Tomaselli, there generally pervades a division between the analytic and evocative camps. For example, Hughes and Pennington (2017) refer to “the analytic versus evocative . . . debate” and the “‘evocative versus analytic’ argument” as pertaining to autoethnography (pp. 12, 24), and Chang (2013) refers to the “[i]maginative-creative,” “[c]onfessional-emotive,” “[d]escriptive-realist,” and “[a]naltyic-interpretative” writing styles of autoethnography that slide back and forth and sometimes overlap on a continuum anchored on one end by the “more literary-artistic style” and on the other by the “more analytic-scientific style” (pp. 118-119, italics in original). This difference between the literary or evocative and the scientific or analytical has bearing on the methodology and method distinction.

“Methodology,” according to Hughes and Pennington (2017), “is the established and evolving approach to and foundation of a research study,” while “[m]ethods are the actual techniques, tools, or means used for data collection and analysis” (p. 11). Following from these definitions, one can draw the distinction “between the framing of autoethnography as a methodology and as a method” (Hughes & Pennington, 2017, p. 12). This would be “methodology” and “method” within the qualitative framework. Because autoethnography, as mentioned previously, can be generally considered “a self-narrative that critiques the situatedness of self with others in social contexts” (Spry, 2001, p. 710) and hence largely involves subjectivity, autoethnography as research corresponds to the qualitative tradition which “focuses on human intentions, motivations, emotions, and actions, rather than generating demographic information and general description of interaction” (Adams et al., 2015, pp. 20-21). As a qualitative “method,” first of all, autoethnography can be “analytical” and “evocative.” Both analytical and evocative types of “autoethnography as method” consciously utilize a “means . . . for data collection” (Hughes & Pennington, 2017, p. 11) recognized as such by the academic literature and given a methodological nomenclature such as “semi-structured interviews” and “participant observation.” As well, both types of “autoethnography as method” directly acknowledge and identify the method(s) in the autoethnographic paper, and most always include quoted extracts from the respective data registers such as interview transcripts and observation summaries, while commenting on and interpreting those data extracts. Although this interpretative commentary on the part of the author, in line with an autoethnographic tone, would at least in part be personalized, experiential, and sensorial, this authorial commentary nonetheless exemplifies the standardized process of directly exhibiting and analyzing data, thereby implicitly vouching for and paying homage to the method(s) behind the data.

Up to this point of analysis, I would contend, is as far that the evocative-type “autoethnography as method” would go—that is, method-wise. It would consciously use one or more methods such as “life story interviews,” prepare transcripts of the interviews, quote from those transcripts in the paper, and analyze the quoted extracts. This would be commensurate with the combined “analytical/evocative” type previously described. Another version of “evocative autoethnography as method” may covertly engage “method” and “data” without acknowledging it in the writing up of the paper, as implied by Ellis et al. (2011) who say that “producing aesthetic and evocative thick descriptions of personal and interpersonal experience” can be “accomplish[ed] . . . by first discerning patterns of cultural experience evidenced by field notes, interviews, and/or artefacts, and then describing these patterns using facets of storytelling (e.g., character and plot development), showing and telling, and alterations of authorial voice” (p. 5). However, pursuant to its goal of “literary artfulness and storytelling to place the reader in the action” (Bochner & Ellis, 2016, p. 63), an EVAT paper, whether a mixed analytical one overtly relying on a recognized research method or a singularly evocative one covertly using a method, most likely would not include a section directly “delineating data collection, analysis, and interpretation as distinctive stages of the . . . process” (Chang, 2013, p. 108), so as to not conventionalize or scienticize the paper to the extent of jeopardizing the “story-likeness” of EVAT that “produces its lifelikeness” and “make[s] people feel deep in their guts and in their bones” (Bochner & Ellis, 2016, p. 63). In contrast, ANAT as a “qualitative method” would usually go much further, directly accounting for its empirical process. Although ANAT, like EVAT, would “center the self as subject and then move on to use [one] or a variety of established methods to collect, analyze, and represent data” (Hughes & Pennington, 2017, p. 23), ANAT most often would include an extra section or phase of the paper describing and justifying the employed “strategies of data management, data analysis and interpretation” (Chang, 2008, p. 11). The resultant IMRD-like format of the paper responds to the desire of ANAT or “analytic autoethnography” to eschew “the kind of emotional reactions that inspire readers to reflect critically on their own lives” as promoted by “the genres of evocative autoethnography” and instead to “cling to the traditional goals of generalization, distanced analysis, and theory building” (Bochner & Ellis, 2016, pp. 62-63).

ANAT, in sum, is mostly, if not always, a qualitative method, whereas, EVAT may be a qualitative method or a qualitative methodology. For now focusing on the former of the two options with respect to EVAT which is now referred to as “evocative-oriented” due to its pending state of development in this paper, I transform Table 1 into Table 2 (below).

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Table 2.

In-Progress Nomenclature of Autoethnography: As Method: Stage 2 of 5.

Autoethnography
As Method (and by Implication Methodology)
(i)	(ii)
Analytical(ANAT)	Evocative-oriented
	(ii-a)	(ii-b)
	analytical/evocative:overtly using method(s)	singularly evocative:covertly using method(s)
← ← ← Betweener → → →
← ← ← Blackgirl → → →
← ← ← Collaborative → → →
← ← ← Community → → →
← ← ← Decolonial → → →
← ← ← Duo → → →
← ← ← Indigenous → → →
← ← ← Interpretative → → →
← ← ← Layered → → →
← ← ← Meta → → →
← ← ← Mystory → → →
← ← ← Performative → → →
← ← ← Personal → → →
← ← ← Reflexive → → →
← ← ← Spinstorying/generative → → →
← ← ← Other types → → →

Note. ANAT = analytical autoethnography.

As shown in Table 2, both “analytical” and “evocative-oriented” autoethnography make use of data collection techniques recognized as “methods,” such as semi-structured interviews, classroom observation, and field diaries. Because, as mentioned previously, these methods would usually generate subjective data in the form of attitudes, opinions, and beliefs, they would be underwritten by a qualitative methodology. For this reason, in Table 2, the parenthetical phrase “and by implication methodology” qualifies the subheading “method.” Notwithstanding, in this case, the “method” itself such as field diaries would be at the forefront of this autoethnography. The reverse, “methodology” at the forefront, is another scenario to be discussed very shortly. Here, as shown in Table 2 (below), once interfaced with a research method such as those just mentioned, while directly or consciously making this known to the reader, ANAT (column [i] in Table 2) takes a lead or superordinate position in charge of the 15 representative autoethnographic types listed below the divided columns in the table.

The reason lies in the features of “method,” as previously described. As methods such as semi-structured interviews have no agenda of their own, other than being a standardized tool or technique to collect data and hence be of service to a vast multitude of different research projects or papers (Hughes & Pennington, 2017, p. 11), methods are inherently external to a research paper such as an autoethnography. Making their approach from the outside (so to speak), albeit at the invitation of the autoethnographer, methods can freely encompass or seep into any of the 15 representative autoethnographic types (cf. Table 2). As a result, any one or all of these autoethnographic types can become method-influenced or method-controlled (Chang, 2013, pp. 118-119). If one were to imagine stripping away all of the text and energy of such autoethnographies of different persuasions such as “layered” and “personal,” leaving behind only traces of the methods of “classroom observation” and “field diaries,” perhaps in the form of an explanatory “methods section” or only the checkerboard lines of an observation extract with the title “class session two,” these traces would be similar enough from one emptied-out autoethnography to the other so as to identify the autoethnographies as commonly being “method” papers. Although said autoethnographies may be of distinct types (e.g., layered and personal), they share the same allegiance to “method,” which, combined with other previously mentioned factors such as the IMRD format, synonymizes with “analytical.” Consequently, the descriptor “analytical” heads up the 15 types of autoethnography in Table 2, each of those types being one subtype or particular manifestation of ANAT. This marks the final destination for ANAT: It is not a type of autoethnography per se, but rather a category heading whose function is to nomenclaturally house the data-driven and research report–like variants of the common types of autoethnography.

The same umbrella function holds for what I provisionally term “evocative-oriented autoethnography” (column [ii] of Table 2). As described previously, EVAT may eschew the “conventionalized” academic features associated with ANAT such as a clearly delineated “results” section while remaining with a directly acknowledged data collection method such as action research and thereby evolving into the mediated form “analytical/evocative” (column [ii-a] of Table 2), or alternately not acknowledging its data collection method but figuratively representing the findings of that data in literary-like form such as a drama script (column [ii-b]). In the case of both, analytical/evocative and singularly evocative (columns [ii-a] and [ii-b]), it is the outlying method that approaches, invades, and controls; hence, both succumb to a somehow-not-exclusively “evocative” master type (column ii), which, being method-guided, is just as superordinate as “analytical.” Certainly, some slack could be cut for the singularly evocative (column [ii-b] of Table 2). Clandestinely inspired and informed by unmentioned data, it opts to hide its method-ness, which thus can become known only by confession or rumor. This is to be considered a little later on, when the more purely evocative (EVAT) returns to this discussion.

By “more purely,” I mean an evocative-type of authoethnography that looks beyond the traditionally method-oriented, as seems the case with Spry (2001) who states that “[a]utoethnography is both a method and a text of diverse interdisciplinary praxes” (p. 701; referring to Reed-Danahay, 1997). Other authors describe EVAT as simultaneously a qualitative method and methodology, thus suggesting that methodology as the approach and method as the action or technique to carry out the approach are codependent one on the other (e.g., Hamilton, Smith, & Worthington, 2008). I, however, see this scenario as transforming into a “more pure” (if you will) scenario, as described by Hughes and Pennington (2017, pp. 11-15): EVAT as a “methodology” without methods.

This, in general, refers to “the self as the only data source” (Jackson & Bryan, 2015, p. 150). The term data source here seems ironic and dismissive. It suggests (a) that subjectivity can emerge on its own and be explored by the thinking, feeling, desiring, and hoping individual without the contrivance of “[m]ethods” such as interview and field notes as “techniques” or “tools” in gathering data (cf. above definition of method and methodology, Hughes & Pennington, 2017); (b) that “method” and “data” themselves may at times be hollow constructs, having appropriated or thieved natural and organic actions of the self, such as talking with people, observing others, and taking notes; (c) that therefore it is fair play to shatter and discard the artificial shell of “method” and “data” encasing these natural actions; and (d) that consequently the crosswinds of these actions, mingled and mixed, becomes a methodology in itself, an atmospheric front disturbing the meeting ground of albatrosses, though our nice wishes to them as they saunter up and veer off, disappearing into the clouds above the domed roofs of museums. This raises a contentious question: How could a methodology, as the approach or underlying belief system of research, prevail without methods or techniques to bring it into action and keep it on route?

A Methodless Methodology

Before I answer the question posed at the end of the previous section, please permit me to briefly recap the intention of this article and to take stock of the ground covered thus far. As mentioned, the article proposes the nomenclatural transformation of evocative autoethnography (EVAT) from an apparent co-type of autoethnography to a superordinate type with the name “critically-oriented evocative autoethnography as a methodology without methods and situated within critical qualitative inquiry” (CEAM-CQI). In this lead position overseeing at least 15 independent, yet overlapping, variants of EVAT (cf. listing of types, Tables 1 and 2), CEAM-CQI would remain atomized alongside the similarly atomized “analytical autoethnography” (ANAT), a state which through the mediation proposed by Gergen (2001) would become conducive to the fruitful functioning of the EVAT-types within the CEAM-CQI column.

Up to now, I have justified, theorized, and contextualized this purpose, and I also have developed the CEAM construct. Now I continue by tracing the roots of CEAM within critical qualitative inquiry (CQI), thereby arriving at the complete CEAM-CQI acronym. After then moving CEAM-CQI into its scenario of disciplinary atomization, I go on to discuss how the apparently unavoidable threat of binarism (cf. Note 2) seems to make atomization an inevitable refuge, the boundaries of which become flexible and porous through CEAM-CQI’s acts of ego-less critique and polyvocal dialogue (based on Gergen, 2001). I conclude by contending that in this atomized state aided by the nomenclatural designation and positioning of CEAM-CQI, the various types of critical EVAT seem more fully able to pursue their social justice purposes, albeit one possible pitfall that I discuss at the end of the article.

The first step to take is to develop the “CQI” suffix of the CEAM-CQI acronym. Before that, however, I move one notch backward and answer the previously posed question about how CEAM—unlike ANAT and evocative-oriented autoethnography (cf. Table 2)—can be considered a methodless methodology. What does this mean? If “methodology” is the approach to follow in obtaining information, and if “methods” are the techniques or concrete actions that create the approach (Hughes & Pennington, 2017, p. 11), much akin to the items on a food menu creating the approach or stance of a restaurant as in southern barbeque cuisine, then how can a “methodology” subsist without a “method” or “methods” such as semi-structured interviews and classroom observations which generate data in the form of transcriptions and tabulated notes, respectively? A generalized answer is that by considering data as experiential rather than empirical, CEAM is not dependent upon methods in the conventional sense. This, according to Méndez (2013), constitutes an “ease of access to data since the [autoethnographic] researcher calls on his or her own experiences as the source from which to investigate a particular phenomenon” (p. 282). This perception of data being commensurate with life experience is complex and underlain by other contentions.

One such contention is that a methodology like CEAM is free of methods when based on those primordial and elusive notions that cannot be adequately explored within the planned and hence contrived spaces which inevitably seem propped up by any type of method, technique, or deliberated action. An example, within the context of autoethnography, is self-identity. According to Hughes and Pennington (2017),

some autoethnographers conceptualize their studies in ways that align with our depiction of autoethnography as a methodology—that is, they understand that the foundation of their work is reliant on their studying themselves. For example, many authors who are seeking to bring previously silenced perspectives to the forefront consciously use their identities as epistemologies, or as ways of knowing. (p. 11)

In this case, if identity is believed to be not only the ends but also the means of understanding the world, then identity as a construct seems far too boundless to be comprehended. That said, identity perhaps could be glimpsed at by way of data registers such as personal diary entries and transcribed extracts from interviews, which may come into view as if within the binocular-like frame of two side-by-side circles. Granted, the black edges of those circles may be fissured, and the viewer may deeply reflect on what she or he views within those circles, but a glimpse, anyway, would be crystallized.

Crystallization, according to Colby and Bodily (2018, p. 163; referring to Richardson, 2000), refers to meaning-making realized by the qualitative researcher. Metaphorically, the researcher interprets through a tight cluster of “[c]rystals,” which, at this moment stuck to the outer side of your binocular lenses, “are prisms that reflect externalities and refract within themselves, creating different colours, patterns, and arrays, casting off in different directions” (Richardson, 2000, p. 934; in Colby and Bodily, 2018, p. 163). This crystallization “enables varying internal refractions and external reflections of meaning” (Colby & Bodily, 2018, p. 163) and thus leads to an “understanding of the topic” that is “deepened, complex, [but] thoroughly partial” (Richardson, 2000, p. 934; in Colby & Bodily, 2018, p. 163); furthermore, this partiality itself “depends upon our angle of repose” (Richardson, 2000, p. 934), and so why not lower the binoculars from your face? Why not give an opportunity to those crystals floating at your naked eye, ringed around your hand, or hovering at the murmur of your heart? What is there to lose? That instrument or tool hanging on the strap from your neck has been neatly crafted, but it can also be an albatross. So why not remove it completely, and let it fly off, if it so could?

Now less one albatross, you can envision “a clear delineation between researchers who utilize autoethnography as a larger ontological and epistemological foundation for their work and others who rely on authoethnography’s focus on the self to bring themselves into research inquiries based on various qualitative methods” (Hughes & Pennington, 2017, p. 12). Opting for the former, one embarks upon “autoethnography as a stand-alone methodology” (Hughes & Pennington, 2017, p. 11). Most of this autoethnography as methodology “utilize[s] first-person narrative descriptions and rationales from introduction to conclusion” (Hughes & Pennington, 2017, p. 23), or, in other words, a personally expressive and literary-like text tangentially including bibliographic references but not extracts from empirical data such as case study (CS) notes, observations, and participant diaries; that is, only the “evocative”-half of Tomaselli’s (2018) “analytic/evocative” mix; the first-person “wandering dramatic and theoretical narrative” being allowed to unroll smoothly and without the speed bumps and creases left by repeated references to “fieldwork”-generated data such as diary extracts (Tomaselli, 2018; above); or, to say it differently, a part-theorized version of Chang’s (2013) “imaginative-creative” narrative. Or, to phrase it yet another way, EVAT in one or a combination of particular types (cf. above list; Table 1) engages personal experience, memory, feeling, reconstructed past, future projection, or otherwise the journey of the self; rhetorically performs this journey; and considers the “doing” of this performance itself as a research approach or methodology (cf. Wilkinson, 2018, p. 153; referring to Madison, 2005).

Hence the name: EVAT as a “methodology without methods.” I would now assert that “evocative” as a singular-word adjective (as distinguished from watered-down double adjectives such as “evocative-oriented” or “evocative-type”) most always functions as a “methodology without methods.” What position, though, would it take among the other names or types of autoethnography? Would it—like “analytical” and “evocative-oriented” with subtypes “analytical/evocative” and “singularly evocative” (cf. Table 2)—head up its own variants of the autoethnographic types? as in Table 3 (below):

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Table 3.

In-Progress Nomenclature of Autoethnography: As Methodology: Possible Positioning (a): Stage 3 of 5.

Autoethnography
As Methodology (without Methods)
Evocative (EVAT)
Betweener
Blackgirl
Betweener
Community
Decolonial
Duo
Indigenous
Interpretative
Layered
Meta
Mystory
Performative
Personal
Reflexive
Spinstorying/generative
Other types

Note. EVAT = evocative autoethnography.

Or, conversely, would EVAT be one more type in a parallel or coordinate position with the other types? as in Table 4 (below):

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Table 4.

In-Progress Nomenclature of Autoethnography: As Methodology: Possible Positioning (b): Stage 4 of 5.

Autoethnography
Betweener
Blackgirl
Collaborative
Community
Decolonial
Duo
Indigenous
Interpretative
Layered
Meta
Mystory
Performative
Personal
Reflexive
Spinstorying/generative
Other types

Note. EVAT = evocative autoethnography.

The scenarios of EVAT as a co-type (Table 4) and as lead category (Table 3) seem equally possible. My impression, though, is that the co-type position (Table 4) is more prevalent at the moment. For instance, Sparkes (2018) states, “Art Bochner and Carolyn Ellis (2016),” with “the term ‘evocative’ autoethnography,” have “put forward . . . criteria that include looking for abundant concrete details . . . [and] wanting to feel the flesh and blood emotions of people coping with life’s contingencies” (p. 259). With his strong suggestion that “evocative” stands for a definable type of autoethnography to be added to the list (cf. Table 4) while inspiring literary sensorialness and characterization among other autoethnographic types on the list, Sparkes (2018) stops way short of assigning “evocative” the superordinate lead displayed in Table 3. Indeed, Sparkes’s inclination is borne out by the methodological positioning of EVAT—even though, for the previously described atomization purposes, we could try to push “evocative,” in its methodological cloak, into the superordinate slot as shown in Table 3. Such is the recommendation made by this article, which I go into shortly. For now, I discuss how EVAT as a “methodology without method” embraces the critical and thus seems an independent player or clique leader while exhibiting the capability to take a leadership position within the field of autoethnography.

Critical-Oriented EVAT

An important feature subsumed by the evocative in its apparently current stand-alone position (Table 4 above) as well as its projected superordinate position (Table 3 above) is its social-justice mind-set (cf. Rawls, 1971/2003). This mind-set, as seen in the Schutt (2018) and Kien (2013) autoethnographies (above), seems to make EVAT too expansive to remain situated beneath the umbrella of “qualitative research methodology” (QRM). If EVAT, as a “methodology without method,” were somehow able to wedge itself under that umbrella, perhaps within a line of QRM anomalous manifestations, its parallel companion-ordinate would probably be “methodologies with integrated methods” such as participatory action research (PAR) and CS, both of which include various self-standing methods such as interviews, observation, and field diaries (Hesse-Biber, 2017, pp. 218-245). This ultimately improbable positioning of EVAT within QRM could be imagined as as that shown in Table 5 (below).

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Table 5.

Imagined Scenario of EVAT Within the Scheme of QRM: Stage 1 of 2.

Note. EVAT = evocative autoethnography; QRM = qualitative research methodology.

Although the first coordinate line of Table 5 maintains its balance, the second does not. This is because EVAT, with its critical intention to combat “experiences of exclusion, degradation, and injustice” and thereby make “the case for change” (Adams, Holman Jones, & Ellis, 2013, p. 675), has an inherent social consciousness that seems more weighty than the procedural-toolkit identity had by methodological/method entities such as PAR and CS. The second coordinate line of Table 5 thus becomes askew, as seen in Table 6 (below).

Rather than jeopardizing the apparently needed equilibrium of the second coordinate line of the QRM scheme with the possibility of imbalance (cf. Table 6), and desiring to exercise its criticality, EVAT abandons the QRM scheme and takes up a dwelling in the direct shade of a qualitative enterprise larger than that of QRM. This would be CQI, as shown in Table 7 (below).

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Table 6.

Imagined Scenario of EVAT Within the Scheme of QRM: Stage 2 of 2 (cf. Second Coordinate Line of Previous Table 5).

Note. EVAT = evocative autoethnography; QRM = qualitative research methodology.

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Table 7.

EVAT as Descendant of CQI With a Tangential Relationship to QRM.

Note. EVAT = evocative autoethnography; CQI = critical qualitative inquiry; QRM = qualitative research methodology.

As shown in Table 7, QRM would be an offshoot of CQI in those many instances when a QRM study has a socially committed purpose. This, conversely, implies that QRM produces noncritical research studies. In such cases, QRM would not be a coordinate of CQI but rather a superordinate, heading up a scheme similar in structure to that of Table 5. Similarly, one cannot go with the blanket assumption that EVAT would be critically engaged in all of its studies or papers (Adams, 2018, pp. 204-205). Notwithstanding, I would maintain that most EVAT, like the previously mentioned Schutt and Kien papers, is critical. In this spirit, therefore, I represent EVAT as a direct offshoot of CQI, as indicated in Table 7 (below). Accordingly, evocative autoethnography (EVAT) shares a social justice–related consciousness with critically oriented QRM, and in that sense, as suggested by the broken-line arrow in Table 7, EVAT maintains a tangential relationship with QRM, as if that of cousin.

This shared bloodline involves criticality. When deconstructing EVAT as to its critical engagement, one is led back to the critical turn in QRM. We can envision this by momentarily setting aside the adjective “evocative,” reiterating the critical tendencies of autoethnography, taking into account the “moments” of qualitative research methodology (QRM), and considering the emergence of CQI. The first step is to reiterate that autoethnography relies on the author “connecting” her or his “stories and experiences to larger social forces” (Corroto, Kaukas, & Havenband, 2016, p. 111), an action which, in turn, involves “individuals and groups universalizing in their singularity the transformative life experiences of their historical moment” (Denzin, 2015, p. 33). As such, autoethnography becomes privy to those “shared and taken-for-granted assumptions” as well as “dominant cultural and social patterns” that hinder or marginalize (Corroto et al., 2016, p. 111). Hence, autoethnography is predisposed toward critically. It is already saddened by, yet wisened to, the memory and ongoing possibility of “being hustled with dice or a deck or a derringer,” as urban novelist/poet Algren describes the blatant oppression suffered by the indigenous Pottowattomie people at the hands of the businessmen who founded the city of Chicago by violently appropriating indigenous lands during the turn of the 19th century (Algren, 1951/2011, p. 12; cf. Sughrua, 2019).

That such repression has continued and continues in some form or another both before and after the founding of Chicago is heeded by autoethnography. While the armed or gunned-up “Hustlertown keeps spreading itself all over the prairie grass,” the “high broken horizon of its towers overlooking this inland sea with more dignity than Athen’s and more majesty than Troy’s” (Algren, 1951/2011, p. 48), autoethnography packs up its “notion of critical” which is “an engagement of discernment of the deep meanings in any given situation with the potentials and possibilities of transformation” (Alexander, 2016, p. 115) and then moves itself and its parcel into the cover of CQI. From its new vantage point beneath the “red-lit rain” of CQI (Algren, 1951/2011, p. 72), autoethnography sees that the “caissons below the towers somehow never secure a strong natural grip on the prairie grasses” (Algren, 1951/2011, p. 48): a pleasant irony revealing that “critical qualitative research . . . can find entry points for social change” (Nagasawa & Swadener, 2015, p. 178). This activistic CQI became home for autoethnography soon after 2005, the onset of the ninth moment of qualitative research methodology (QRM), which is approximated to have been primarily developed up until 2010, and which is still active today. ⁹

During this ninth QRM moment, “the social sciences and the humanities” more consciously became “sites for critical conversations about democracy, race, gender, class, nation-states, globalization, freedom, and community” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, p. 3), and the already existent experimental and literary-type of ethnography, in written, spoken, and “acted” form and as introduced and promulgated in previous moments six, seven, and eight, was now looked to with a renewed enthusiasm, in the belief that this type of writing could be more effective than conventionally written or presented research papers, or at least provide an enriched parallel track to run alongside standard academic research, to engage the above-mentioned “critical conversations” (Denzin, 2010, pp. 12-14; Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, p. 3, 2011, p. 3, 2018, pp. 1-20).

With this ninth moment-originated CQI and its repertoires including autoethnography, the task was “no longer . . . to just interpret the world, which was the mandate of traditional qualitative inquiry,” but rather “to change the world and to change it in ways that resist injustice while celebrating freedom and full, inclusive, participatory democracy” (Denzin, 2015, p. 32, italics in original). In the Rawlsian sense (above), this “democracy” does not necessarily involve the sense of governance but rather the humane sense of equality regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, social class, religion, (dis)ableness, and any other detrimental difference within society (also cf. Pasque & Salazar Pérez, 2015, p. 140). These differences are wide-reaching; they respond to distinctions of socioeconomic class while erasing the boundaries of socioeconomic class, as they regard all-inflicting harmful differences and marginalization. In reaching toward this equitable democracy, CQI intends to prompt the readership to take action (Cannella & Lincoln, 2015, pp. 258-260); to significantly “turn a point of view” on critical issues (Stake & Rosu, 2012, p. 52); and to hope for continued societal transformation (Denzin & Giardina, 2012, p. 20); all the while, throughout these three main objectives, autoethnography is partnered up with, and working under the auspices of, CQI. This intersectionality of critical advocacy with autoethnographic-like writing and performance, as ushered in by the ninth moment of QRM, has proven essential to present-day critical autoethnography such as EVAT.

With respect to EVAT, I am now closely approaching the “CQI” suffix of the superordinate form termed “critical-oriented evocative autoethnography as a methodology without methods and situated within critical qualitative inquiry” (CEAM-CQI). The objective in constructing CEAM-CQI, as mentioned previously, is to create the scenario whereby the apparently inevitable atomization of EVAT, now as CEAM-CQI, becomes mediated by a respectful and tolerant disposition toward critiquing and dialoguing with other atomized camps and, in particular, that of ANAT (following from Gergen, 2001). I discuss this more below.

For now, though, I return to my final lead-up to the CQI suffix. I do so, now, by backing up from the ninth moment of QRM so as to work toward completing the background of EVAT and hence facilitating its transition into CEAM-CQI.

Let me say, to begin, that prior to the currently active ninth moment which began in 2005 and would also incorporate EVAT and by extension CEAM-CQI, and long before Ellis and Bochner’s (2000) Handbook chapter (above), autoethnography, as mentioned previously, was apparently born out of “the rise of identity politics” in the mid-1970s and then took on more impetus approximately 15 years later during the 1980s to 1990s “crisis of representation” (Adams, Holman Jones, & Ellis, 2015, pp. 1, 15-16). This “crisis” contested “the idea that ethnographers should—or could—hide behind or perpetuate an aura of objectivity” in their project results (Adams et al., 2015, pp. 16, 21). At this time, autoethnography gained significant momentum (Adams et al., 2015, pp. 16-17, 21-22). Its manner of “being personally, emotionally, aesthetically, and narratively connected to a cultural group or experience” (p. 18) responded to the need for “something new . . . and qualitatively different” from the heretofore “traditional idea of an objectively accessible reality” promoted by the “‘scientific method’” and now deemed “‘neither clear nor useful’” (Bochner & Ellis, 2016, pp. 48-49; referring to and partly quoting from Rorty, 1982, p. 195). And autoethnography, its presence already having been established as of the 1990s, fit the bill, and by the end of this same decade, it was recognized as a type of submethodology under the umbrella of qualitative research methodology (QRM), as explained by Bochner and Ellis (2016, p. 53) and Gannon (2017, p. 2). ¹⁰ Thereafter, from the late-1990s and well out of the “crisis of representation,” autoethnography steadfastly developed itself within the reaches of QRM.

Its prodigal submethodology “autoethnography” now in tow, QRM, apparently having had taken its initial cues or inspiration from the crisis-era complaint that “empiricism’s value neutrality masks domination, conserves the interest of the status quo, and reinforces oppressive social practices” (Bochner & Ellis, 2016, p. 49; referring to Bernstein, 1983; Giroux, 1984; Habermas, 1985), soon contemplated critical engagement. This means “to address processes of unfairness or injustice within a particular lived domain” so as “to make a contribution toward changing those conditions toward greater freedom and equity” (Madison, 2012, p. 5). This critical consciousness seemed to divide QRM, and apparently autoethnography as well, into a critical camp and a noncritical camp (Esposito, Kaufman, & Evans-Winters, 2018; Pasque & Salazar Pérez, 2015). The critical camp of QRM—along with its seemingly quite sizable, critical-oriented, subcamp autoethnography—began to peak approximately as of 2005, the onset of the ninth moment, as mentioned above. This seemed a turning point as it fueled “critical qualitative inquiry” (CQI).

I state this with more assurance than trepidation. Granted, to identify watersheds and assign them “years” or “periods” is an approximation. In the present case, for instance, Cannella (2015) describes traces of CQI within the 1960s to 1980s “postmodern revolution in research” that reconsidered “the roles/purposes of intellectuals as scholar researchers and cultural workers” in light of the perceived breakdown of “modernist universals like truth, linearity, dichotomous thought, predetermined outcomes, and even notions of progress” (pp. 11-12). Notwithstanding, and generally speaking, I would assert that sometime after the onset of the ninth moment in 2005, there began what Denzin (2015) calls “a shifting center to the project” (p. 36) whereupon QRM, which by its very nature is destined to have “constant breaks and ruptures” and to fracture into parallel but also superimposed forms, somehow made a carbon-copy of itself and colored in that copy with its acknowledgment of “a historical present that cries out for emancipatory visions” (Denzin, 2015, pp. 31, 36). This marks the emergence of “critical qualitative inquiry” (CQI) which does not “impose a single, umbrella-like paradigm” over itself but rather incorporates “multiple interpretative projects” including the mainstay autoethnography (Denzin, 2015, p. 35).

This multiplicity of CQI seemed to have necessitated that CQI break rank from its once-parent QRM and autonomize itself into lead position over QRM, as shown in previous Table 7. Now as a superordinate itself, CQI is able to head up most or all qualitative endeavors that are critically inspired. To illustrate this, I now transform Table 7 into Table 8 (below).

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Table 8.

CQI as Superordinate.

Note. CQI = critical qualitative inquiry.

A discussion about methodologies apparently parallel to QRM being beyond the scope of this article, I draw attention to the first and second rows of Table 8 while reiterating that the ushering in of the ninth moment of QRM marked not only the emergence of CQI but also the intersection of critical autoethnography with CQI.

Ambiguity I do not intend by dating this autoethnography/CQI praxis as sometime “shortly post”-2005. While I realize identifying a specific or approximate year does not mean much in itself, I feel compelled to think of QRM and its critically transformed self, CQI, within the widely discussed chronology of QR. The chronology spans from 1900 to the present, consisting of 11 moments in total, each of which not referring to an exclusive use or practice QR but the time period when the particular practice first appeared on the scene as required by the then-current academic and social conditions, and all of which apparently still active today (Denzin, 2010; Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, 2011, 2018). ¹¹ Because the ninth apparently is the “moment” with the most forceful call for advocacy and directly follows the “moment” when autoethnography began to be perceived as a QR methodology in the mid- to late-1990s, I see CQI constructing itself on or about 2005 (above). At this time, CQI moved swiftly in its self-construction, at least to the extent of being able to step out onto the qualitative terrain, “a grey subcivilization surrounded by green suburbs,” pull itself up into the “midnight” just within its reach, and then nudge its way into the academic dialogue within the “battle-colored sky” where “ceaseless signal-fires of the great refineries wave an all-night alarm” (Algren, 1951/2011, pp. 25, 95). For directly following the ninth moment in chronology while paralleling it in application is the tenth, called the “fractured, posthumanist present” estimated to have begun in 2010 (Denzin & Lincoln, 2018, pp. 9-10; cf. Notes 10 and 11). This marks the realization of a wide divide or chasm separating science-based researchers from CQI researchers (Denzin & Lincoln, 2018, pp. 7-17).

This “fractured” moment, foreseeing the detrimental effect of this continued methodological conflict, calls for mediation to be extended across “the bright carnival of the boulevards” (Algren, 1951/2011), as Denzin (2010, pp. 42-43; 2015, pp. 42-45) has nobly done. To reiterate, the “fractured” tenth moment runs generally parallel to the ninth moment. This contemporaneity of both the ninth and tenth moments suggests that CQI not only quickly nudged into the academic dialogue on or about 2005 but also afflicted some dents and bruises along the way, enough so as to provoke “the methodological backlash associated with the evidence-based social movement” as seen in the tenth moment (Denzin, 2010, p. 13). Hence, the approximated “soon after”-2005 inception date of CQI and hence, no doubt, some of that “backlash” directed to CQI’s star lieutenant: EVAT which is an advocate of critical engagement as well as a methodology without methods. When seen primarily as an advocate, EVAT seems regulated to the role of player on the autoethnographic team (cf. Table 4); alternately, when seen primarily as a methodologist achieving advocacy, EVAT becomes team captain under the auspices of CQI (cf. Tables 7 and 8 above).

CEAM-CQI as a Lead Descriptor

The latter scenario, Captain EVAT, seems preferable, at least for atomization purposes (cf. above; below). This, nomenclaturally, would be evident in the acronym CEAM-CQI. To construct this acronym, however, one needs to move beyond the team player scenario. How does this scenario emerge in the first place? It seems a consequence of seeing critical advocacy as the singular importance of EVAT. Although critical research with “its explicit interest in the abolition of social injustice” certainly can be transcendent and utopic (Bronner, 2002, p. 5), its concern with histories and power struggles of a localized context (Rehbein, 2015, pp. 79-101; Thompson, 2017, pp. 1-14) seems to run the risk of stifling criticality, keeping it so community-specific as to require a redefinition or repurposing from one place to the next, from one study to another. Furthermore, the contemporary “glocal” vision, which holds the so-called international or otherwise “more universal” nature of the local as meaningful insofar as it reflects back onto the particular locality (Guilherme & Menezes de Souza, 2019; Pennycook, 2010), is insightful and significant. Nonetheless, the “glocal” mostly represents a range of isolated, vertical movements, as if in the form of long iron rods skyward, one rod from each community pointing up into the universal. The alternate image, or at least a complimentary one, could be seen as lines like communication cables criss-crossing horizontally from community to community.

Indeed, this last image can be stated as the goal of criticality, or both images together can represent a critical enterprise. This I would certainly concede. My point, however, is that the inherent specificity of criticality always poses the danger to fall into or dwell too much within the first image of independent and parallel hierarchies. This would seem to happen when the criticality, as relating to a given work including autoethnography, is pondered over in an isolated manner that sees the ends as more important than the means. For example, if the sole or primary value of the Schutt (2018) “evocative autoethnography” would be seen as its critical message involving identity construction upon the Tel Aviv landscape where one perceives sociopolitical challenges, and if the rhetorical performativity of the paper would be seen as mainly technical or instrumental in arriving at that critical message, then the resonance of the Schutt (2018) paper would center exclusively or near-exclusively on the critical message, as if a set of “talking points,” regarding identity struggle in Tel Aviv. In this sense, then, an EVAT like the Schutt paper could become a period piece of single-issue importance, and as such, EVAT could be destined to its own slot or drawer in the line-up of autoethnographic repertoires (cf. Table 4), perhaps as that of a locale-based, critical-message bearer.

Admittedly, I am exaggerating here to make a point, and this point is that the situatedness of a critical-oriented autoethnography like EVAT creates a tension between singular importance and collective value. The former, singularity, is described above. The latter, collectivity, comes about when the critical message is seen as integrated with the rhetorical performance of the autoethnography. Take, again, the Schutt (2018) paper. This paper, as described previously, involves autoethnographer Schutt whose biological father is Israeli. Touring Tel Aviv in the company of his biological father and his father’s relatives is the focus of the autoethnography, as recounted in the combined dramaturgical narrative, travelogue entries, and scholarly discussion of the text. Hence partly and significantly performative and EVAT-oriented (above), while enacting the previously mentioned autoethnographic credo to explore the self as its impacts upon and is impacted by the larger community (Boylorn & Orbe, 2016, pp. 16-17; Spry, 2001, pp. 708-711), the Schutt (2018) paper shows the author-autoethnographer physically immersed within the Tel Aviv setting, affectively “zoom[ing] backward and forward, inward and outward, [as] distinctions between the personal and cultural become blurred, sometimes beyond recognition” (Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p. 739).

For Schutt, such a “blurring” between one’s own self and the selves of those in community becomes cleared up, or at least reprieved, in the final scene when he, once home in Australia, glues the fragile wooden Oud back together (cf. above). This dramatically rendered scene seems to remind Schutt and, by extension, his readers that “[i]t is crucial . . . to consider privilege and penalty alongside the social forces they perceive, identify, and study in relation to themselves” (Hughes & Pennington, 2017, p. 23). This is not necessarily a happy ending for the autoethnographer Schutt because the “attempt to link facets of . . . selfness with public discourses about larger issues” can be unpredictable, leading not to closure per se but rather “some serious re-thinking” and “unsettling disconnect” (Rinehart, 2018, pp. 74, 78, 82, italics in original), as with Schutt (2018) above. Nonetheless, Schutt can console himself by acknowledging that his EVAT paper has offered up a “template theme.” By this I mean a critical message that seems mainly topic-oriented (e.g., apparently in Schutt’s case, the notion of identity as the drive for rebirth or reinvention). This template theme, as staged illocution with a postponed impact, has shades of subjectivity and gaps needing specificity and interpretation by the reader, and the reader, in turn, feels encouraged to oblige, arriving at one of many possible interpretations (e.g., the willingness to close the gap between oneself and the estranged other, whether or not a family member, as part of the pro-inclusion mind-set). Key to this transformation from a “template theme” to a “personally empowering theme” is the rhetorical performativity or dramaturgical development of the autoethnography, which enacts or acts out “the perspective of the interacting individual” caught up in experiences which reflect and are reflected by societal phenomena as well as the passage of time and the envisioned future (Denzin, 2015, pp. 36, 40, 46).

This utopic and Rawlsian-like hope of overcoming oppression (Denzin, 2015, pp. 36, 40, 46; cf. Rawls, 1971/2003) is held by each of the particular types of autoethnography identified in the above descriptive list numbered 1 to 13 as well as in Table 1, that is, at the moment those types become critically engaged methodologies under the auspices of CQI, as already discussed. Furthermore, within this realm of critical engagement, it is the rhetorical performativity of each of the autoethnographic types that “move[s]” the autoethnographer “back and forth between the personal and the political, the biographical and the historical” (Denzin, 2015, pp. 36, 46), as seen in the Schutt (2018) autoethnography. The resultant confluence between rhetorical performativity and critical engagement seems strongly evoked by the descriptor “evocative,” which according to Sparkes (2018) stands for “structurally complex narratives that are told in a temporal framework representing the curve of time” (p. 259). In this sense, then, the “evocative” adjective within the nomenclatural acronym EVAT can serve as a superordinate category, unifying the various descriptors of autoethnography in Table 1. It is for this reason, for example, that while I see Schutt (2018) and Kien (2013) as eclectic combinations of specific types of autoethnography (above), I also see both Schutt (2018) and Kien (2013) more generally as EVAT (cf. Note 6). This basis of EVAT as an umbrella-category (cf. Table 3) would be the aesthetics of enacting literary-like conventions such as dialogue, conversation, scene, and plot and thereby appealing to the reader’s affective sensibilities (Bochner & Ellis, 2016, pp. 75-119) while performing or rendering a critically oriented “template theme” within the mandate of CQI (cf. Tables 7 and 8). And as a result, we arrive at the nomenclatural acronym CEAM-CQI, standing for “critical-oriented evocative autoethnography as a methodology without methods and situated within critical qualitative inquiry.”