Abstract:
Abstract:
In Imperial Eyes Mary Louise Pratt (1992: 7, emphasis original) defines autoethnography
as "instances in which colonized subjects undertake to represent themselves in ways that
engage with the colonizer's own terms ... in response to or in dialogue with . .
.
metropolitan representations." Although Pratt's conceptualization of autoethnography has
much to offer post-colonial studies, it has received little attention in the field. In this
thesis, I interrogate Pratt's notion of autoethnography as a theoretical tool for
understanding the self-representations of subordinate peoples within transcultural terrains
of signification. I argue that autoethnography is a concept that allows us to move beyond
some theoretical dualisms, and to recognize the (necessary) coexistence of subordinate
peoples' simultaneous accommodation of and resistance to dominant representations of
themselves. I suggest that even when autoethnographic expressions seem to rely on or to
reproduce dominant knowledges, their very existence as speech acts implicitly resists
dominant discourses which objectify members of oppressed populations and re-create
them as Native Informants. I use Pratt's concept to analyze two books by Islamic feminist
sociologist Fatima Memissi. Memissi's Dreams ofTrespass and Scheherazade Goes
West illustrate the simultaneity of accommodation and disruption evident in
autoethnographic communication. Across the two books, Memissi shows herself
renegotiating the discourses which discipline her (and her speech). She switches back and
forth between the positions of reader and author, demonstrates the reciprocity of the
disciplinary gaze (she looks back at her dominants, reading their own reading of her
representation of her social group), and provides a model of autoethnographic dialogue.
