Introduction: Decolonizing Autoethnography

• Published in: Cultural studies, critical methodologies Vol. 18; no. 1; pp. 3 - 8
• Main Authors: Chawla, Devika, Atay, Ahmet
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.02.2018; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Autoethnography; Colonialism; Critical race theory; Decolonization; Postcolonialism; critical race theory; decolonizing the academy; methodologies; autoethnography; ethnographies; pedagogy; ethnicity and race
• ISSN: 1532-7086; 1552-356X
• DOI: 10.1177/1532708617728955

Can there be a decolonial autoethnography? If so, what could such an autoethnography look, sound, and feel like? If the possibility of decolonizing this mode of knowing does not exist, then what are the impediments—discursive, material, political, social—that disallow a move to decolonized autoethnographic work? Where would decolonization take us? What does it mean to write the self in and out of colonial historical frameworks? In this special issue, we bring to life such conversations through nine essays and a postscript that perform, ruminate, narrate—with a thoughtful tenderness—some versions of decolonized and postcolonial autoethnography. The essays illustrate the form that emerges when the colonial and postcolonial (both past and present) are taken as central concerns in autoethnographic writing.