Abstract
Autoethnography as a relatively new methodological approach or genre has spread widely in qualitative research in the last decades. Among other qualitative methodologies, it questions scientific “truths” and “facts” by claiming the inherently biographical nature of research and focusing on the socio-culturally situated subject of the researcher. In spite of its spreading use especially in post-structuralist research, autoethnography has received serious critiques because of its subjectivism and questionable scientific nature, its methodological uncertainty and ethically problematic character. Moreover, from a critical, neo-Marxist or Marxist approach it can be criticized for its self-centred and/or post-structuralist approach that prevents research from contributing to social transformation. This chapter aims at reinforcing the scientific legitimacy and importance of this genre, not hiding the justifiable problems related to it. In this chapter, the author will present an autoethnographic study that is a reinterpretation of his previous school ethnography from the point of view of his gay identity. By re-telling the story of the study, he will develop a queer Marxist narrative, and will offer some epistemological, methodological and hermeneutical reflections on critical autoethnography.
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Notes
- 1.
This is a pseudonym for the student in order to preserve his anonymity.
- 2.
I have to admit that I also had a similar nonintervention reaction in the beginning. Nevertheless I still think that their educational role should have been much clearer. When I had been in the role of teacher in previous locations, I had always intervened.
- 3.
With an awareness raising LGBTQ school program, we (with my LGBTQ association) tried to enter this school in 2011, but we did not get the permission.
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Mészáros, G. (2015). 4.2 The “Gay Eye” of a Researcher and a Student in a Hungarian School: Autoethnography as Critical Interpretation of the Subject. In: Smeyers, P., Bridges, D., Burbules, N., Griffiths, M. (eds) International Handbook of Interpretation in Educational Research. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9282-0_34
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