The First Disciple: A Generative Autobiographical Performance From An Ethnographic Field  

Oleh:

Chawla, Devika

Jenis: Article from Journal - e-Journal
Dalam koleksi: Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies vol. 7 no. 4 (Nov. 2007), page 357-377.
Topik: aesthetics; generative autobiography; memory; performance ethnography; performative reflexivity
Fulltext: 357.pdf (143.16KB)

Isi artikel

The essay that follows has encased within it two performances. The first performance, The First Disciple, with which I begin this text, is a generative autobiography and a short memoir about my mother that I performed on stage before an audience in a college in middle America.1 The second performance, Visiting Mother in Other Secrets, is a narratively dramatized and textually performed collection of conversations, reflections, field notes, and recollections that took shape and form as I was immersed in a life-history study of urban North Indian women’s experiences in Hindu-arranged marriages in New Delhi, India. Performed in a style that integrates it with The First Disciple, the second performance shows the emergence of the first. In it, I show myself as a participant, a listener, performer, and most important an audience to the telling of the personal narratives of my participants. I present these performances in a nonlinear chronology to unravel the “how’s” of generative autobiography—a genre that emerges as audiences become practical collaborators in audiencing autobiographical performance (Alexander, 2000). I do this by showing how The First Disciple took concrete root in my “performative reflexivity” during fieldwork. Following this, I discuss such a reflexivity in light of some key features of generative autobiography that, as I show, may occur as one audiences and partakes in ethnographic field narratives. As I do so, my hope is to expand the locale/s of generative autobiography, and enhance our understanding of performativity and field work.

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