Writing my way through grief in this text, I realized some of the moral conundrums my relationship with Gene presented. I began to understand what Primo Levi (1958/1987) calls “the need to tell our story to ‘the rest’,” to achieve “an interior liberation”(p. 15). I felt I had to tell my story to move on in my personal and professional life. This story about our relationship, his illness, and my caregiving become a story of my experience and growth. In this account, I considered what I needed to tell for myself, while honoring my implicit relational trust provision with Gene the best I could. This included protecting us together and individually, and other people in the story. Thus, I tried to tell a truthful account for readers, while I omitted things,occasionally changed details of a scene,and invented composite characters to protect identities. All of these techniques are commonly used in ethnographic storytelling and memoir.
You become the stories you write—Art and I became the couple who had an abortion and wrote about it. No matter that we might feel differently now than then and see ourselves as changed from the characters presented in the story, this portrayal of ourselves is edified in print. An important element in writing autoethnography then is considering the ethical responses to one’s own story by readers. A second is considering the people in your life who might be distressed by your revelations.
They say they just want to write their own story. I tell them that self-revelations always involve revelations about others. I tell them they don’t own their story. That their story is also other people’s stories. I tell them they don’t have an inalienable right to tell the stories of others. I tell them that intimate, identifiable others deserve at least as much consideration as strangers and probably more. “Doing research with them will confront you with the most complicated ethical issues of your research lives.”I tell them they have to live in the world of those they write about and those they write for and to. I tell them they must be careful how they present themselves. “Writing about your depression and suicide attempt while taking sick leave and trying to earn tenure?” I ask, aghast, and the former student replies,“Yes,I have to write myself out of my depression.”She does, and gets a teaching award the next year.
You become the stories you write—Art and I became the couple who had an abortion and wrote about it. No matter that we might feel differently now than then and see ourselves as changed from the characters presented in the story, this portrayal of ourselves is edified in print. An important element in writing autoethnography then is considering the ethical responses to one’s own story by readers. A second is considering the people in your life who might be distressed by your revelations.
They say they just want to write their own story. I tell them that self-revelations always involve revelations about others. I tell them they don’t own their story. That their story is also other people’s stories. I tell them they don’t have an inalienable right to tell the stories of others. I tell them that intimate, identifiable others deserve at least as much consideration as strangers and probably more. “Doing research with them will confront you with the most complicated ethical issues of your research lives.”I tell them they have to live in the world of those they write about and those they write for and to. I tell them they must be careful how they present themselves. “Writing about your depression and suicide attempt while taking sick leave and trying to earn tenure?” I ask, aghast, and the former student replies,“Yes,I have to write myself out of my depression.”She does, and gets a teaching award the next year.
~ Excerpt from "Telling Secrets, Revealing Lives: Relational Ethics in Research With Intimate Others" by Carolyn Ellis. Qualitative Inquiry
In everything, I am of the firm belief that I have sought and am seeking the good. Be wise, not cynical.
1 comment:
And on that note, "I think Absolut should create a communion vodka/wine and call it Absolut Truth. Now that is Jesus turning water into funk." is Absolut wisdom on your part. That's awesome Hannah, You're gonna make a franchise out of this.
My friend's pastor once said our lives are made up of the connections we make living it. And I guess noone's tale is his own, is it? Everything we say or do has such huge implications on the people around us. It's scary, when you come to think of it. Nevertheless, it doesn't stop us from doing what we think is best and good. Go Mothers, because Mummy knows best.
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