Abstract
This chapter traces the auto/biography of a book that began its life as an ‘academic’ project, but became instead a popular book: Cotton Everywhere (1994).1 Or did it? During the process of writing this personal narrative, I will be exploring some of the ethical, theoretical and experiential issues that led to the book changing the course of its ‘career’ in the way that it did. I begin by relating the research process, telling the story of my own increasing awareness of my responsibilities as a researcher and the decision-making process this caused. I then turn to a discussion about what counts as an ‘academic’ text. As a challenge to the post-modernist notion of the ‘death of the author,’ I discuss how, during the process of writing the book, aspects of my own memories, intersubjectivity and changing sense of self became woven into its fabric.
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© 1999 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Kenny, C. (1999). Memory, Truth and Orality: the Lives of Northern Women Textile Workers. In: Polkey, P. (eds) Women’s Lives into Print. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230374577_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230374577_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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