Professional Writing Service http://StudyHub.vip/AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL-WRITING--PROPOSED-AS-A 👈

1. 1
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITING: PROPOSED AS A METHODOLOGY
AND AN EPISTEMOLOGY FOR FIRST PERSON RESEARCH
It is only in the biographies and autobiographies of
scientists and other creative individuals that we get to
see their creative process, with all its complexities,
wrong turns, anxieties, imaginative twists, conflicts
and collaborations. (Montuori, 2005)1
I’ve been working in autobiographical research for about 15 years now. I used this
approach in my master’s research and my doctoral thesis. I’ve been using life stories
in teaching, intervention and research since I completed my masters, and for the past
5 years, I’ve been directing master’s students who use an autobiographical approach
as their research methodology.
All this work led me to develop a manner of integrating autobiography and first person
epistemology. I call this method performative writing. It’s inspired by the
phenomenological movement. By works of Heidegger, Ricoeur, Husserl, Derrida. And
by hermeneutical approaches used by Merleau Ponty, Derrida, Jauss, among others…
The main difficulty for this paper would have been to synthesise all those influences in
one 20 minute presentation. So rather than attempt to do that, I decided to
demonstrate its application. In this paper I’m taking the risk of showing you how I do
research using performative writing in autobiography. So, this writing is a real research
performing my intention in the writing of this paper.
When I use performative writing, there are metaphors, analogies, spiral mouvements,
feelings and emotions, quotations, rhythms, poetry, scientific thoughts, and crisis. All
of this for the purpose of anchoring the writing in the movement produced by the mind
searching, the soul feeling and the struggle of being.
This story is about mestizaje as metaphor for a place of cultural encounters. As many
scholars have pointed out.
1
Montuori, A., 2005, pp.156-157.

2. 2
Mestizaje has been used to define social phenomena since the sixteenth century and,
in Latin America, especially in Mexico, to characterize important cultural processes.
Nestor Garcia Canclini asserts concepts of hybridity and mestizaje should be used to
consider intercultural mixing and that interpreting composition of all of what makes up
the Americas requires the use of mestizaje in both the biological and the cultural
spheres. (Canclini 2003, in Velarde Cruz 2014, p.52)
This story is also about void as an analogy for a scientific research problem. It’s about
epistemology and scientific culture as objects of inquiry. The existential tension,
provoked by the perspective of writing in English, is the motivating force.
Introducing meaning
At the beginning, I wanted to write this paper in French. Because French is the
language I presently use even if my origins are hispanic. Suddenly, I found myself
remembering that my second language is really English. A language I learned out of
obligation, not out of desire. I realized that an important chapter of my autobiographical
story was about learning English. And then, all of a sudden, I was surprised to find
myself thinking in English. That rooted me in my mestizaje experience, in the time of
my autobiographical story. Then, I felt the desire to write from that state of knowing.
But thinking in a mestizaje way of writing in an autobiographical manner is not
necessarily seen as natural.
The human condition (language, history, being-in-the-world) is about encounter, the
birth of something different which was not contained in the elements in presence. On
the other hand, if we have no choice but to be mixed, paradoxically, we rarely think of
mestizaje in this way. A mestizaje way of thinking is a minority way of thinking.
(Laplantine et Nouss, 1977, p. 71)2
The original intention of this paper was about “Autobiographical writing”. About writing
autobiography in French. But the exigency of communicating that writing in English to
you, took me back to the time of my English learning experience. Back in my cultural
mestizaje story. From that place, the writing of this paper takes on a whole new
meaning. This meaning is a challenge.
2
(free translation) La condition humaine (...) est rencontre, naissance de quelque chose de différent
qui n’était pas contenu dans les termes en présence (...) En revanche, si nous n’avons d’autre choix
que d’être métis, le métissage paradoxalement a rarement été pensé comme tel. La pensée métisse
est une pensée minoritaire (Laplantine et Nouss, 1977, p.71).

3. 3
The challenge is to show the mestizaje way of writing as I’m writing. Usually when
referring to a scientific presentation, whether it’s in French or in Spanish, we don’t say
“a paper”. In both these languages, scientific presentations are about oral
communication, about talking, about speech… So paper, here, is like the body of the
writing, the body of the self trying to write itself.
Also, throughout my experience in autobiographical research, the way of writing has
become an epistemological and methodological exigency. When doing this, I feel like
I’m tearing something away from a traditional way of doing research. Something about
truth and science. Because for me, as Bateson said, epistemology is not only a matter
of truth, but of personal experience when writing in first person research: ...
epistemology is always and inevitably personal. The point of the probe is always in
the heart of the explorer: What is my answer to the question of the nature of knowing?
(Bateson,1979, pp.87-88)
Autobiographical writing is making the self the source of scientific knowledge, or worst,
making myself the source of this knowledge, is like standing at the edge of an abyss.
An abyss created by the tearing away. An abyss that invites me not to think about
knowledge anymore, but about knowing. Knowing the edge and knowing the void in
the abyss. The main question here is: how, in the body of the paper, can I write about
the edge of the abyss and about that void, without falling under the pressure of the
multiple cultures I embody? And, how do I inhabit this place, with the intention of
constructing knowledge? I think, that the only way I am able to do this, is by tracing a
path as I’m writing this paper in English, keeping in mind the cultural mestizaje.
What I’m trying to say is that, at this moment, I’m confronted by the void created by
the gap between the Spanish, the French and the English cultures. I’m seeking a way
of reducing that gap. And this is not only about language and culture, but about the
scientific culture itself. That is a state of tension. Which is created by the clash
between cultures. It’s in this state of tension that I’m trying to create new meaning.
That is what mestizaje means.
What is characteristic of mestizaje is this movement of welcoming what does not come
from me, but from elsewhere: the language and the culture of others which initially

4. 4
may appear to me as foreign, will progressively bring forth a feeling of strangeness
(otherness?). (Laplantine et Nouss, 2001, p.36)3
And for me, creating new meaning from this state of tension is the essence of writing
autobiography.
That’s what problematizing in autobiographical research means to me: Knowing the
edge, facing the abyss and trying to reduce that gap. I call that state of tension an
existential crisis. And it is this existential crisis that allows me to embody the intention
of this first person research. That is how the self becomes a source of knowledge, or
even better, a source of meaning.
Theory is knowledge with meaning, and meaning everywhere depends upon a mind
that means: such mind as we know only immediately and subjectively. Knowledge,
then, must start there, with the mind and the self, and so also must theory ” (Olney,
1981, p. 16)
This means that the act of writing becomes a performance which starts here, in the
crisis, with the intention of resolving that crisis by constructing new meaning. The act
of writing my own autobiographical process of mestizaje is an act of theorisation.
That’s what this body-paper is all about: doing autobiographical research while I’m
tracing the path in order to theorize.
The crisis
I think about autobiographical research as first person research. But there is a risk
here. The risk of an illusion. An illusion of aloneness. This illusion is suggesting that
we are alone when we are doing autobiographical research.
For a long time… actually, until this moment, I’ve been defending this concept of first
person research, believing that it’s about writing alone. But the fact is that in this
moment, I’m writing this paper in the presence of another person. And this person is
not virtual; this is a person in flesh and blood who is correcting my writing as I’m
3
(free translation) Ce qui pour nous est caractéristique du métissage, c’est ce mouvement qui
consiste à accueillir ce qui ne vient pas de moi mais d’ailleurs: la langue et la culture des autres, qui
au début me semblent étrangères, puis vont progressivement faire naître un sentiment d’étrangeté.
(Laplantine et Nouss, 2001, p.36)

5. 5
writing. This reminds me that, when I wrote my master’s thesis, which was an
autobiographical research, I was convinced that I was doing it by myself. Alone. In a
space where the only others were people I encountered in my past life, and somehow,
had an influence in the construction of my identity. Of course we all know that
autobiographical writing is always writing about those encounters.
This fact is real. In my life, the encounters I have with family, friends, students,
teachers, employers, colleagues, and so on are always transforming my way of being
with them, of thinking about the world and of perceiving life. That’s always a source of
tension because I don’t like to perceive those encounters as the source of my
transformation. They appear to me more often as a confrontation of singularities. But
it is in these encounters that mestizaje takes place, as I evoked when I was talking
about learning another language as an obligation.
Recently, I attended a presentation of a thesis of one of my students who did an
autobiographical research about solidarity and reciprocity. The main criticism from the
jury was that the story he was telling didn’t illustrate well enough those concepts. And
that to research solidarity and reciprocity requires interacting with others; at least,
experiencing alterity in the presence of another person. At that moment, I wasn’t able
to respond to that criticism. It’s just now, while writing this paper, in the place of
mestizaje, that I see what they missed.
What they didn’t see was that this student was not alone. He had, at least, me as his
directeur. He had his classmates. He had his friends, his family, his teachers with
whom he was discussing all the issues involved in his research. In these interactions
he was experiencing the clarity and the power of his construction in the real world.
And while he was writing about his autobiographical experience he was also
interacting with others in the search of a new way to construct a theory of solidarity
and reciprocity. Because writing autobiography is not only writing about the past. It is
also about the time of the writing, in the writer’s time.
In our Western way of thinking, we are so convinced of our aloneness that we can’t
even consider another perspective. Such as, the perspective of always being in
relation to another, being altered by that other and altering that other. We fail to see

6. 6
the permanent presence of the others in all our activities… even when we think we are
alone writing about ourselves.
In fact, I’ve been so altered by western culture that I’ve forgotten my own experience
from my own cultural heritage. What I mean is: in my country of origin, solidarity, the
presence of the other and the connections between us are part of our lives. We don’t
even think that loneliness is possible. Because solidarity is a matter of staying alive.
This is something I wrote about in my master’s research:
Representing myself as a solitary actor in the world of the living (Berlanga, 1995)4
is
an illusion of opacity. A spectacle behind closed curtains. An empty play in an empty
theatre. I am not a solitary actor. I cannot ignore the presence of others without risking
nothingness and annihilation. (Gomez, 1999, p. 71)5
How could I have forgotten that simple fact? That’s what I call, in my experience of life,
the effects of mestizaje. Because here I am, having to rely on someone to help me
write this paper in English.
As I am writing about this tension in the encounter, a specific feeling emerges:
I was wrong and I was right. I was wrong about loneliness, but I was right about
something I’ll now call intimacy.
Intimacy
Performing autobiographical writing is about creating a space of intimacy with those
others who altered me, instead of feeding the tension. By writing the story of these
encounters, I’m recognizing the way they helped me construct my identity. And,
meanwhile, I realise that in those encounters I was altering them too. As I’m doing it
right now in the act of sharing with you my writing. But that puts us in a paradoxical
place: at the juncture of the past and the present. Considering at this juncture three
4
Berlanga wrote:“ Vivimos en el “ mundo de vida ” no como actores solitarios la nuestra no es una
vida de soledad: vivimos con “ otros ”... ”
5
Gomez wrote: Me représenter comme acteur solitaire dans le monde de la vie (Berlanga, 1995) est
illusion de l’opacité. Une représentation aux rideaux fermés. Un scénario vide dans une salle vide. Je
ne suis pas un acteur solitaire. Je ne peux pas ignorer la présence de l’autre sans risquer le néant,
l’annihilation. (free translation)

7. 7
different time lines. The time of the story I’m writing about, the time I’m writing the story
in, and the time when you are reading it or, in this case, hearing it. All those time lines
cross at a junction in one single space: the body of this paper.
The intimacy I’m talking about here, is the sensual proximity of bodies. The body of
this paper and our own blood-flesh bodies. Sensuality as an expression of feelings, of
touching, of desires. A meaningful kind of intimacy in the mestizaje way:
Mestizaje asks us to close our eyes. It’s during the night that souls meet, to collide or
to wed. But this is not a dark night. As in Genesis it bears the light of dawn with its
promises and realisations. (Laplantine & Nouss, 1997, p.114)6
Constructing meaning rather than constructing knowledge is, in my experience, the
finality of autobiographical writing when intended for research. So, in this specific
instance, I’m talking about the search for a path. A path between the two edges of
the gap where our cultural crisis moves us.
Gruzinsky refers to this place of mestizaje in these terms:
Intercultural mixing is a complex phenomena. A process involving multiple layers and
dimensions of human interaction... And so, we must ask ourselves: by what alchemy
do cultures intermix? Are they miscible? If so, under what conditions? (Gruzinski,
1999, p.11)7
In my experience, the conditions for this alchemical process to occur are created by
the encounters of: me writing the story of my encounters, the encounters taking place
at the time of my writing and the encounters at the moment you are reading this… all
of that through the mediation of the body-paper. This mediation allows for the alchemy
to occur between the souls and the senses of all those actors. Ken Wilber calls it The
marriage of sense and soul: the path of a union between truth and meaning8
. That
alchemy is only possible if the author of the autobiography is constructing intimacy
instead of tension. That requires an attitude of recognition and gratitude. It’s not about
6
(free translation) le métissage demande, lui, que l'on ferme les yeux. C'est dans la nuit que les êtres
se rencontrent, pour se heurter ou pour s'épouser. Mais cette nuit-là n'est pas ténébreuse. Comme
dans la Genèse, elle est porteuse du jour, des promesses et des réalisations". (Laplantine & Nous,
1997, p.114).
7
(free translation) Gruzinsky wrote: The mixing of cultures, thus, covers disparate phenomena and
extremely diverse situations [...] But this process - which obviously extends beyond cultural boundaries
- raises another obvious question, so obvious that we forget to ask: by what alchemy do cultures
intermix? Under what conditions? [...] These questions presuppose that cultures are miscible ...
8
book title and back cover. Wilber, 1998

8. 8
knowledge. It’s about feelings... Meanwhile, as I’m doing this I am constructing the
path between truth and meaning. We are talking here about true feelings.
This is a matter of phenomenological understanding. An issue of performing life writing
by putting the subjectivity of the self at the service of hermeneutical auto-interprétation.
It is the concept of Dasein as being-in-the-world, performing life’s infinite movement,
with the intention of making meaning. For Heidegger, this notion is a matter of caring
for the I in the world of life. It is an effort of remaining aware of the evolving nature of
the self itself… aware of the possibility of the self being altered and altering the other,
in the world of life. That is the intentionality of autobiographical writing. Understanding
this process is the task of hermeneutical auto-interpretation. In an effort to answer that
burning question of Romanyshyn: “How does one find words to bridge the gap
between soul and its epiphanies [...] and the mind that would take hold of them, give
them shape and form in a concept or a theory?”.
And then, write a metaphor of self as a way of understanding. Return to the proposition
of Einstein: Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional
life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the
narrow whirlpool of personal experience. (Einstein in Olney, 1981, p. 8)
Writing intimacy through the body of the paper, should create a place of an encounter
where aloneness is not an option anymore. Just let me remind you, this story I’m telling
you is about my crisis … and I’m just showing you how… I’m finding the my path. At
this precise moment, I’m looking in the eyes of Louise, the person who’s helping me
with this writing. A need for her own voice is becoming an urge. As an exigency of
gratitude, as a need of recognition for the extent of her help.
Being in touch with the English part of me has been a discovery. It’s like walking
through a very narrow path… the path of forgotten memories, of my lost sensibilities,
those coming from the learning of my second language. Those memories and
sensibilities lead me to another way of thinking... Actually, I see self-truth and one’s
own meaning as epistemology and I see writing of true feelings as methodology. And
I see both, as performing first person research… in full awareness of the presence of
the others.

9. 9
The voice of the presence. Louise
This experience of helping my friend Luis write his paper in English moves me in ways
I was not expecting. It puts me in my own crisis. While he’s writing, I’m reading,
correcting, rewriting, interacting with him, in his story. It’s very intimate... And I’m
realizing that it’s through my senses, in this body-paper dance, that a part of my own
story is reawakened, seeking new meaning, new life... In my story, the English
language evokes warmth, sensuality and love. But it also evokes loss. The loss of
childhood, of faith and of meaning... But in this moment, in this encounter with Luis in
his own story; and because of my love for him and my desire to help him; and because
of our shared passion for constructing meaning with words on paper, I’m letting go of
my grief. And I yield to touching and being touched in a way not known to me before...
In my own cultural mestizaje, I see the interplay of encounters, past and present; I see
the feelings in the writing and the knowledge in the knowing. This intimate dance of
encounters is healing something from the past. But even more than that, it’s creating
a new story. A story about love and gratitude.
The theorizing of the meaning: as a conclusion...
Performative writing as a way of doing autobiographical research in the perspective of
first person epistemology, suggests a link between the intimate experience of the
researcher and scientific thought. Jauss associates this process to the “aesthetic
experience” which he believes is at the source of our construction of meaning and our
desire to transform the world we live in. He says: The primary experience of a work
of art takes place in an orientation to its aesthetic effect, in an understanding that is
pleasure, and a pleasure that is cognitive. (Jauss,1982, p. 34)9
And one’s enjoyment
of the affects as stirred by speech and poetry can bring about both a change in belief
and the liberation of [one’s] mind. (Jauss,1982, p. 92)10
... This openness to new
possibilities leads to creative actions that transform the world we live in. For Jauss,
this experience occurs in three phases or moments, peoisis, aesthesis and catharsis.
This is how I experience these moments:
9
Jauss, H.R. Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics, 1982
10
Jauss, H.R. Towards an Aesthetic of Reception, 1982

10. 10
The moment of poiesis is extracted from the crisis and the void. The feeling of tension
in the cultural encounter. The abyss between scientific thought and the meaning. The
moment of aesthesis is performed by the effort to communicate through the writing:
the rhythm of the language, the sound of the words, the meaning of the sentences.
The moment of catharsis is pulled by the effort of theorizing. These three moments
are working simultaneously, like in the moving spiral of a tornado mixing thoughts,
feelings and actions.
This writing is about present, past and future. The present of a crisis searching in it’s
past the roots of it’s existence. The memories of the past helping the writer to go
through the crisis of the present. And this improbable but predictable future emerging
from the fury of the tornado. And so, all this autobiographical writing is not only about
truth and science, but about life, about intimacy and gratitude.
I find resonance in this passage written by a poet-researcher:
In my lifewriting I will continue to declaim, exclaim, and proclaim, not in order to blame
and defame, not for fame and a well-cited name, but in order to claim that I have known,
intimately and gratefully, the privilege of walking on the earth. (Leggo, 2012, p. 77)
Clearing the path for new meaning, new thoughts and new ways of perceiving life.
From my experience, autobiographical research is about this convergence of past,
present, future, truth, meaning, action, feeling and the eternal movement of life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
● BATESON, G. (1979). Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: E.P. Dutton.
● GOMEZ, L. (1999). Une démarche autobiographique dans la quête de l’identité
d’éducateur. Mémoire de maîtrise, Université du Québec à Rimouski, Éducation,
Rimouski.
● JAUSS, H.R. (1982a). Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. In Theory and History of
Literature. Volume 2. Wlad Godzich and Jochen Schulte-Sasse (Ed.), Translated by
Timothy Bahti, Introduction by P. De Man. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press. 164 pages.
● JAUSS, H.R. (1982b). Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics. In Theory
and History of Literature. Volume 3. Wlad Godzich and Jochen Schulte-Sasse (Ed.),
Translated by Michael Shaw. Introduction Wlad Godzich. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press. 357 pages.

11. 11
● LAPLANTINE, F. et NOUSS, Al. (dir.), (2001). Métissages. De Arcimboldo à Zombi,
Paris: Pauvert.
● LAPLANTINE F. and NOUSS, A. (1997). Le métissage. Paris : Flammarion.
● MONTUORI, A. (2005). Gregory Bateson and the Promise of Transdisciplinarity,
Cybernetics & Human Knowing, Vol 12, nos. 1-2, pp. 147-158
● LEGGO, C. (2010). Lifewriting: A Poet’s Cautionary Tale. LEARNing Landscapes,
Volume 4, Number 1, 67-84
● OLNEY, J. (1981). Metaphors of Self. The Meaning of Autobiography. New Jersey:
Princeton University Press.
● ROMANYSHYN, R.D. (2007). The Wounded Researcher. Research with Soul in Mind.
New Orleans, Louisiana: Spring Journal Books.
● VELARDE CRUZ, S.I. (2014). Mestizaje in Colonial Mexican Art. In Stefanie
Wickstrom & Philip D. Young, Mestizaje and Globalization: Transformations of Identity
and Power. Arizona, USA: The University of Arizona Press.
● WILBER, K. (1998) The Marriage of Sense and Soul. New York, N.Y. : Random House.