The (Im)Possibilities of Writing the Self-Writing: French Poststructural Theory and Autoethnography

Abstract

Poststructural theories problematize taken-for-granted humanist notions of the subject as capable of self-knowledge and self-articulation while simultaneously providing a rationale for incorporating the personal into research. The body, emotions, and lived experience become texts to be written and read in autoethnography. However, a paradox arises for poststructural autoethnography in that autoethnographic research presumes that subjects can speak for themselves, whereas poststructuralism disrupts this presumption and stresses the (im)possibilities of writing the self. This article explores the work of pivotal French poststructuralists—Foucault, Barthes, Derrida, and Cixous—as they write themselves and put those selves under erasure in writing. The author identifies the implications for a reconfigured poststructural autoethnography, tracing textual strategies that evoke fractured, fragmented subjectivities and provoke discontinuity, displacement, and estrangement. In poststructural autoethnography, the writing writes the writer as a complex (im)possible subject in a world where (self) knowledge can only ever be tentative, contingent, and situated.