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Was it autoethnography? The classificatory, confessional and mad politics of lived experience in sociological research

  • Brigit McWadeEmail author
Original Article
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Abstract

This paper will consider the history and politics of autoethnography in relation to the activist scholarship of Mad Studies. As part of ethnographic research about ‘recovery in/from serious mental health problems’ in the UK, I accessed an NHS community “arts for mental health” service as a service-user would do, situating this data in broader socio-political debates concerning the meaning, management and lived experience of madness and distress. This paper examines the framing of this research as autoethnographic and the relationship of personal and/or lived experience to the knowledge produced. I explore the classificatory, confessional and Mad politics of experience, identity and identification, and embodiment for research subjectivities. Employing autoethnographic means, I consider the ways in which I situate myself, and am situated by others, in relation to my research, evaluating the methodological implications of the crisis of representation in anthropology, and the post-structuralist criticism of identity politics. Through an engagement Mad Studies, I seek to move beyond these two established responses to the use of personal experience and autobiography in research.

Keywords

Autoethnography Experience Mad studies Ethics Qualitative methods Social inequalities 
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Notes

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© Springer Nature Limited 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Lancaster Medical SchoolLancaster UniversityLancasterUK

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