Experimental Autoethnography

This Text Which Is Not One: Dialectics of Self and Culture in Experimental Autoethnography
Author(s): Kimberly J. Lau

Source: Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 39, No. 2/3, Special Double Issue: Dialogues (May Dec., 2002), pp. 243-259
Published by: Indiana University Press
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KimberlyJ.
This
Text
Dialectics
Which
Is
of
and
Self
Not
Lau
One:
Culture
in
Autoethnography
Experimental
I like to think of myself as

born of seven sisters. But, in
actuality, and like everyone
Folklore, as an academicdisciplineand a public practice,

has a long historyof drawingon the personalto querythe
cultural,a historyof drawingon personalexperiencesand
else I know, I was born to

one woman, a fourth-
narrativesto understandthe culturaltraditionsand practices

thatmove out from the individualto constitutethe social. I
generation JapaneseAmerican woman from
intendto push the boundariesof thattraditionby fore?
who
Kaua'i, Hawaii,
married a second-generation
man from
Chinese-American
groundingthe fragmentedsubject?in this case, myself?

withinpoststructural,postmodern,and postcolonial
paradigms.In particular,I want to focus on the political
dimensionsof personalexperienceby investigatingEast/
New Jersey. My mother?she

was the daughter of one of
West and West/Eastculturalflows throughautoethnography.

The idea of autoethnography?asboth practiceand
the seven sisters. My grand?

mother and her six sisters
product?marriesthe "ethnographicimpulsethat looks
are the seven Okumura

sisters.
The legacy of the seven
sisters is an important one in
my life. My mother and I
The title of this experiment in textually fragmented

autoethnographicwriting refers directly to Luce Irigaray's
1977 essay, "ThisSex Which Is Not One," an inspired con?
sideration of language, desire, and women's multiplicity.
Irigaray'smetaphor of multiplicityis grounded in biology,
lived with my grandmother

while my father was in
Okinawa at the end of the
Vietnam War. The seven
sisters were our family. The
linked to women's lips, a metaphor with a double entendre

at its heart. Through the metaphor of the lips, Irigaray
problematizes language (spoken through one set of lips)
and desire (established, though only in part, through the
seven sisters have brothers

and husbands and sons, but
I rarely think of them when I
other set) and the waysin which theywritethe body through

their complex relation to patriarchalconstructs, controls,
and limitations.
Journal of FolkloreResearch,Vol. 39, Nos. 2/3, 2002

Copyright ? 2002 Folklore Institute, Indiana University
243

244
KimberlyJ.
Lau
think of my early life and my

family in Hawaii. We were
outward,at worldsbeyondtheirown, as a meansof marking

the social coordinatesof the self with the "autobiographi?
four generations of women

?my maternal greatgrandmother lived with my
cal impulsethatgazes inwardfor a storyof self, but
grandmother at that time?

staying in one house with no
ultimatelyretrievesa vantagepoint for interpretingculture"

(Neumann1996:173,emphasisin original).While some
have identifiedearly examplesof autoethnography
in texts
like ZoraNeale Hurston'sDust Trackson a Road ([1942]
men, and we were sur?

rounded and supported by
the seven sisters who brought
1969) and in W. E. B. Du Bois's articulationof "double

consciousness"(Reed-Danahay1997:3), most considerations
of autoethnography
grow out of the crises in representation
us sashimi and takuan for
motivatedby a postmodernconsciousnessthatnow
characterizesmuch social science research.1In this context,
dinner, homemade bento for

lunch, arare and mochi and
edamame
for snacks.
seeks to make sense of the often contradic?

autoethnography
tory relationshipsbetweenself andculturethatso acutely
markthe postmodernpredicamentwhile also exertinga very
"Seven sisters" is also

one of the very best hands, a
"limit-hand," that you can
make in the Chinese or
real influenceon the politics of representationand
Japanese or Hawaiian game

called mah-jong. This hand
ethnic autobiography,fiction, memoir,and texts thatidentify
is a form of critiqueand
scholarship:"Autoethnography
resistancethatcan be foundin diverseliteraturessuch as
zones of contact,conquest,and the contestedmeaningsof
requires extreme luck

because no tiles may be
picked up from the pile of
those discarded
by the other
Rather, the player
attempting "seven sisters"
For Irigaray,the metaphor of the lips is also important

because of what it suggestsabout nearness, about a contact
must draw seven sets of
all the time, and moreoverno one can forbid her to do so,
for her genitalsare formed of twolips in continuouscontact.
players.
matching pairs from the

untouched tiles. I have
collected the "seven sisters"
on many occasions, thereby
my first-place
position at the end of the
night's gaming. First place
was always rewarded with a
big prize of $4, donated by
my grandmother whenever
ensuring
we played on Christmas
or New Year's Eve. The
Day
second-place
person
received $3, the third $2,
and even the last-place
person won $1. My grand-
and a caressingthat never fuses: "Woman'touches herself
Thus,withinherself,she is alreadytwo?but not divisibleinto

one(s)?that caresseach other" ([1977] 1997:249).Implicit
in the idea of nearness,in the infinite contact and caressthat
never closes, that never possesses, is a critique of the inti?
mate relationsbetween patriarchyand capitalism,a critique
of the ruling economy of ideas that positswomen'ssexuality
as a possessionto be had, a sort of logic that continuallyges?
tures back to the "one"?whether that be the belief in lan?
guage as singularor a belief about the primacyof the penis.
Irigarayspeaks of a nearness "so pronounced that it makes
all discriminationof identity,and thus all forms of property,
impossible.Womanderivespleasurefrom what is so nearthat
shecannothaveit, norhaveherself.... This puts into question
all prevailingeconomies: their calculationsare irremediably
stymiedbywoman'spleasure,as it increasesindefinitelyfrom

This Text Which Is Not One

mother came from Kaual
245
self and culturethataccompaniesthe exercise of representa?
tional authority"(Neumann1996:191).In choosing
with crisp singles just for

these special holiday games.
as researchmethodand writtenproduct,I
autoethnography
hope to drawout the political implicationsthattranscultural
flows have not only on culturalcommunities,but on
I've reminisced quite a bit

about my relationship to the
seven sisters, the third-
emotionalattachmentto them, but also becausethey help
generation JapaneseAmerican women whose
illustratesome of the culturalhybridities?the transcultural

flows betweenEast andWestandWest and East?that were
grandparents came to
Hawaii as plantation
entirelynaturalizedas I was growingup. As for many of us,

my upper-middle-classsuburbanchildhoodlife was full of
culturalhybriditiesin the form of food, in the form of
laborers and whose parents

ran a Japanese imports store.
They surrounded me with a
sense of being Japanese. But,
as I mentioned earlier, my
mother married a secondgeneration Chinese-American
man from New Jersey. My
father, he was an amazing
cook.
individualswithinthose communitiesas well.

I sharea rangeof personalnarrativesbecauseI have an
traditions,in the form of materialartifacts.But what

happenswhen one leaves home?Thatis, whathappenswhen
one's life?my life, in this case?starts to be denaturalized
throughwider experiences,particularlyeducational
experiencesthatcontributeto a differentlevel of race
consciousness?Whathappensto my emotionalattachment
to these storiesas I begin to recognize,address,grapplewith
He would take his big

where we kept
wok outside
the propane stove, and he

would stir fry our dinner
its passage in and through the other" (254-55, emphasis in

original).
In response to such patriarchalcapitalisteconomies of
logic, Irigarayoffers the idea of woman as multiple,woman
with "sexorgansmore or less everywhere"([1977] 1997:252),
and
every night?beef
broccoli, shrimp Cantonese,
tofu and tomatoes, pan-fried
noodles.
company
dazzling
When we had
it would
become
show, flames
upward as he
shooting
tossed whatever
it was we
were having in the wok. He

cared deeply about food,
and he ate everything with
pride. He even used food to
test the strength and charac?
ter of my various dates as I
was growing up. We would
go to dim-sum, and he
would order chicken's feet
and pig's feet, jellyfish and
in an attempt to re-envisionand rearticulatewoman not as

lackinga penis (as Freudunderstoodher) but ratheras pos?
sessing a plural sexuality:'The geographyof her pleasureis
farmorediversified,moremultiplein itsdifference,morecom?
plex, more subde, than is commonlyimagined?in an imagi?
naryrathertoo narrowlyfocusedon sameness"(252-53). "An
imaginaryrather too narrowlyfocused on sameness"derives
preciselyfrom the economy of ideas in which woman is de?
fined in comparisonto man?"We are now obliged to recog?
nize thatthe littlegirl is a littleman"(Freud[1933] 1965:118).
Irigaraywantsto positanotherpossibilityin the plural,a possi?
bilitythat both accountsfor and rejectsthe (mis)perception
of woman as having an insatiable sexual hunger. Such a
(mis)perception,she writes,resultsfromthe patriarchalimagi?
narythatfocuseson "theone":women'sdesire"reallyinvolves

246
KimberlyJ.
tripe, sometimes even fishstomach soup. Then he

would
pass it around and

render judgment based on
which, if any, of the "exotic"
foods my date was willing to

consume.
For Christmas
Eve he
always prepared Mongolian

Hot Pot. Our table was set
with our blue-and-white
Chinese rice pattern dishes,
with chopsticks, and little
Japanese dishes for the
various sauces, three or four
Lau
the fragmentednatureof my own subjectivity?What

happensto my heretoforeunquestionedsense of self as I
begin to recognizean emergentethnicidentitywhile
simultaneouslyrealizingthatI don't fit very easily into the
rangeof otherrace/ethnicity/culture-based
groupsthatexist
on my universitycampus?
How we go aboutnegotiatingbi- and tri- andmultiracialismor multiculturalismon individuallevels is not a
new topic. Nor is the fact that such negotiationsare
intimatelyrelatedto issues of authenticity,especially the
intersectionof individualand culturalauthenticity.This
point is illustratedbeautifullyin Nisha Ganatra'sshortfilm
JunkyPunkyGirlz, which chroniclesa young IndianAmericanwoman'squest to get her nose pierced.Anita,the
young woman,is accompaniedby two friends?a black
lesbianand a white woman?both of whom have pierced
per person, all atop the red

floral Christmas tablecloth
noses themselves.
that my mom had made.

Mongolian Hot Pot is an
In the openingscene, we see Anitabackingout of the

nose piercing,which is to be performedby a young white
event as well as a meal, and

each person essentially
cooks for herself. My father
womanin a hip New Yorkpiercingstudio.Anitarunsout to
would prepare the meats?

beef, pork, chicken, shrimp
?and then we would fill the
hot pot chimney with coals
and the basin with broth and
we would
cook our meats.
Later, when we were done,

my mother would add
noodles
and tofu and greens

to the broth and we would
eat soup. This being Christ?
mas Eve, we always fol?
lowed the meal with some
"traditional" dessert like
trifle or cheesecake.
My father was in the military

and we lived at times in
both Japan and Taiwan. My
mother, like most military
a differenteconomymore than anythingelse, one thatupsets

the linearity of a project, undermines the goal-object of
desire, diffusesthe polarizationtowarda single pleasure,dis?
concertsfidelityto a single discourse..." ([1977] 1997:253).
Multiplicitymatters,and in more waysthan one.
To move from Irigaray's"ThisSex Which Is Not One"to
my own "textwhich is not one" is to produce a kind of femi?
nist mirroring,a writingthat enacts, on some level, some of
the linguisticplayand feminine desire that Irigarayinspires.
In experimentingwith textualfragmentation,I seek to place
different voices and different narrativesnear to each other,
an open, approachingnearnessthat resiststhe "linearityof a
project,"that resistscohesion and a sense of closure, of con?
tainableknowledge,of singularmeaning that more conven?
tional scholarshipimplies. In the same waythat desire (and
thus pleasure) exists in the infinite approachfor Irigaray,I
wantto suggestthatmeaningmightexist,in part,in the spaces
betweenthe dominantnarratives.Thus,in this case,we might
locate meaning not just among the three narrativesbut also
beyond?in their intertextuality.

247
wives stationed
call her motherfrom a pay phone. Her first questionis,
"discovered"
"Whatside does it go on, the rightor the left?"Her mother
overseas,
and acquired
many small treasures that

the local population seemed
more than happy to ex?
for American dollars.
respondswith a pointedquestionof her own: "Anita,do you

thinkgettingyour nose piercedwill makeyou more Indian?"
This painfulquestionis then followed by whatcan only be a
change
familiarseries of suggestionsand complaintsabouthow
Today, our renovated (most

walls knocked out to create
Anita shouldjoin the IndianStudentUnion on campus,
one large space) Southern

California ranch house looks
like an Asian art museum. It
abouthow she shouldcheck out one of the Indianboys

finishingmedicalschool, abouthow she shouldhave learned
at least a little Hindi and Sanskritgrowingup.
has a subtle slate floor and is

full of antique Chinese
Andyet, Anitaperseveresin herquestandfindsa local

Indianjewelryshopinstead.Whenshe asksthe Indian
shopkeeperwhethershe does nose piercings,the woman
furniture, blue-and-white
pottery from both China and
respondsin Hindi.Anitamustthenadmitto herthatshe cannot

speakHindi.She buysa nose studbutleaveswithoutgetting
Japan, and antique Japanese

baskets.
flower-arranging
hernose pierced.In the end,it is herfriendswho pierceher
The showpiece
tional Chinese
is a tradi?
wedding bed,
raised and enclosed with
three sets of highly deco?
nose forher,on the left side,andas theydo, we hearthe voice

of Anita'smotherleavinga messageon the answeringmachine.
Indeed,it is the left sidethatshouldbe pierced.
ThoughAnita'squest to get her nose piercedforces her
rated, painted and carved

double walls and a ceiling;
people were still using this
bed when my mother
This move towardtext playand multivocalityemergesout

of my desire to create a text that enacts its own theory, an
bought it from them. People

still use it, but in extremely
had lots
different contexts?I
idea that I stumbledupon as I was teaching a graduatesemi?

nar titled "WritingCultureand Identity."One of the books
of sleepovers there when I

was little. In fact, this was
we read for that coursewasGloriaAnzaldua'sBorderlands/La

Frontera(1987), a personal narrative(in both prose and po?
identity through literal
etry) in which she reclaims mestizo,
supposed to be my very own

version of a canopy bed, but
it didn't fit in my bedroom.
and metaphoric discussions of life, race, class, sexuality,

language, history, and politics in the borderlandsbetween
Mexico and Texas. Borderlands/La
Fronteramoves between
Our house also has some
Englishand Spanish,often replicatingthe local Tejanoprac?

tice of drawingon both Spanishand Englishwithin a single
sentence. In some cases,words,phrases,and whole passages
modern (1960s)
Danish furniture, some
antique silver, and at
Christmastime a full army of
German nutcrackers.
classical
Growing up, none of this

seemed particularly interesting
or remarkable. I knew that our
furniture varied from most of
are translated;in other cases, they are left untranslated.

On the day that we were to discuss this book, I walked
into the class at the tail end of a very heated conversation
that two young women were having about how much they
dislikedthe text. Over the course of the next thirtyminutes,
perhapslonger, these twowomen?both white, middle-class,
and non-Spanishspeaking/reading?slowly began to articu-

248
KimberlyJ.
Lau
my friends' families, but they

also had pieces of "oriental"
to grapplewith her own sense of culturalauthenticity(or

inauthenticity?atone point she says, despondently,to her
furniture here and there.
friends,"I couldn'teven tell her [the Indianshopkeeper]I

wanted to get my nose pierced"), she finds that she has
They certainly had plenty of

"oriental" rugs, often in
oddly Western colors like
pink and coral and sea-foam
the appropriateculturalknowledge to pierce her nose on

the correctside. Here, Ganatraseems to dismiss the issue
of culturalauthenticitywhile simultaneouslylegitimizing
green, but that's exactly

what allowed them to blend
the deep emotionaltraumasthatone experiencesin seeking

to become an "authentic"member,or representative,of
into my friends' homes. I

think it was this blending,
this westernization
of
one's culture.
"oriental" material culture,

that thoroughly naturalized
my own mixed cultural
In some ways, issues of perceivedculturalauthenticity/

inauthenticitymightbe whatexist inside Benedict
Anderson'simaginedcommunity(1983), a perspectivethat
we don't really considerin our discussionsof nationalism.
Thatis, one's sense of authenticityor inauthenticity
necessarilyderives from an imaginedcommunityof one's
own, a groupof people who are somehow"really"Indianor
surroundings.
In the spring of 1999, I went

to the Asian American
Japaneseor Chinesein the fixed (andfictive) sense of

ethnicity.Lisa Lowe (1991) underscoresthe political
importanceof transformingfixed notionsof culturaland
Studies conference; my
department had sent me to
do some scouting for a
position that was opening up
in Asian American Literature
and Ethnic Studies.
I have
never felt more uncomfort?

able and out of place at an
academic conference than I
In
did at that conference.
this context,
I felt doubly
displaced ?first, because of
the fact that I do not "do"
Asian American Studies but
everyone assumed that I did
by virtue of my being there,
and second, because I felt so
late whythey had such an overwhelminglynegativeresponse

to Anzaldua'sbook. Put simply,they felt excluded from the
Spanishparts of the text and were frustratedby that exclu?
sion. Theywanted the power to know,to understand,to ren?
der judgment, to converse. Never before had they been so
directlyexcluded from a text they had expected to engage.
This is the brillianceof Borderlands/La
and this
Frontera,
is whatI mean by a text that enacts its own theory.In moving
between Spanishand English,Anzaldiiais able to evoke, at
least in this specific case, a very bodily understandingin her
readersof the disempowermentthat culturalforces like lan?
guage often exert on those who are not members of domi?
nant groups. Borderlands/La
Frontera
mayseem uniquelywell
non-Asian.
comparatively
around
and then
Looking
positioned to perform this sort of work because of the dis?

comfort that language exclusion can generate, but other
works,like MichaelTaussig'sTheMagicoftheState(1997), are
looking at myself in the

mirror, I was convinced that
I looked much less Asian
than the other Asian confer-
similarlycapableof enactingthe theoryand ethnographythat

they describe.
TheMagicof theStateis a surrealethnographic-fictiveac?
count of spirit possession and state power as interlocking,


ence participants.
on that experience
Reflecting
now, it
seems odd and a bit ironic

that this academic setting
triggered my emotional
response, that the content and
the participants of the
conference
moved me to look
in the mirror and then

compare what I saw to the
faces that somehow "be?
longed" there.
I have replayed
this
in my mind
experience
many times, wondering
what it is that makes me
(feel) different. In discussing
this odd sense of displace?
ment and inauthenticity with
and job candi?
colleagues
dates for that Asian Ameri?
249
ethnic identityas fundamentalto transformingthe broader
hegemoniesof U.S. society. In her article"Heterogeneity,
Hybridity,Multiplicity:MarkingAsian AmericanDiffer?
ence," she refersto DianaChang'sshortstory,"TheOriental
Contingent."Chang'sstory centerson two young ChineseAmericanwomen who meet at a party.Each womangoes to
greatpains to avoid discussingher backgroundbecauseeach
fears thatthe otheris "moreChinese."
Lowe's analysisof this storyattemptsto explainthe
originsof the painthatthe two youngwomenexperiencein
theirculturalinsecurities.She writes:"Chang'sstoryportrays
two womenpolarizedby the degreeto whichthey have each
internalizeda culturaldefinitionof 'Chineseness'as pureand
fixed, in whichdeviationis consideredas less, lower,and
shameful"(1991:26).Lowe's commentaryemphasizesnot
only the personaltraumaof this self-judgment,but also the
widerculturalimplicationsof such traumas:dismantling
notionsof fixed identitysimplycannotoccurif the two
womencannotexpressto each othertheirindividual(yet
shared)experiencesof perceivedinauthenticity.
can Literature position, I

have considered the idea
that perhaps my habitus, as
Bourdieu would call it, is
distinctly Southern Californian and thus somehow not
Asian enough
(one colleague
agreed heartily with this
idea). I've also tossed around
the idea that perhaps it's
some sort of physiognomic
distinction, that perhaps my
face reveals my thoroughly
hybrid, naturalized, some?
mutually sustaining systems in a non-identified (but very

real?he includes photographs,and not just drawings,to re?
inforce that point) South American country. Taussig'ssur?
realismforces the readerto suspendall longing for narrative
coherence, for explication, for easy comprehension;rather,
the reader is plunged into a state of disorientationwhere
political,historical,and culturalinformationsweepsthrough
the reader'sconsciousness.In this way,TheMapc of theState
pushes the readerto relinquishcontrol of the immediateact
of reading/knowing in a way that seems analogous to relin?
quishingthe Enlightenmentmodes of understandingcorpo?
realityand spiritismthat often prevent people from believ?
how less-than-authentic
suburban upbringing. But this
seems absurd, at least when
I'm not comparing what I see
in the mirror to what I see
ing in supernaturalphenomena like spirit possession.

Drawingon these twoworksas lofty models, I am hoping
that textual fragmentation and non-standardpresentation
such as this might inspire enough disorientationto force us
out of passivereadinghabitswhereintextsare consumedwith?
around me at conferences
like the one for Asian
American Studies.
out much conscious consideration of the multilayered

framing(s) that structurethem.As a method of ethnographic
writingand representationthat seeksto capturethe "collage"

250
KimberlyJ.
I use these examples?Chang's storyand Ganatra's

film?because the personalexperiencesof the main
charactersresonatedeeply with my own experiencesof
culturalinauthenticity.I cannotcountthe times thatpeople
Years before that Asian

American
Lau
Studies confer?
ence, I took an intensive

Chinese (Mandarin) summer
have addressedme in Chineseor Japanesewhile I've simply
course at U.C. Berkeley and

had the exact same sense of
shameI feel when people ask me aboutChineseNew Year

customsor the JapaneseObonFestivalbecausemy own
cultural inauthenticity and

I was not the
displacement.
only student who could
knowledgeof themhas been gleanedfrombooks or

restaurantmenusor touristbrochures.
neither speak nor under?

stand Chinese, but I think I
was the only Asian Ameri?
can student who could
neither speak nor under?
stand. I know this because
we were put in classes
according to our beginning
Mandarin skills since many
students
returneda blankface. It is difficultto expressthe odd sortof
The storiesI have told hint at a largerstoryof my own

Chinesetrauma,the storyof why a third-generation
womanwho
American,fifth-generationJapanese-American
speaksonly Englishcomes to desire a sense of cultural
authenticityand culturalauthority.But more significantly,I
wantto ask the questionof how such a traumagets worked
and theoretical
into broaderintercultural,interdisciplinary,
"dialoguesacross diversity."
As postmodernintellectualsand academics,we have
begun to dismantlethe idea of culturalauthenticity(e.g.,
Chinese-American
who had grown up speaking

Chinese were taking the
course to learn to read and
write. Though I justified my
desire to learn Mandarin
by
thinking of it as a possible
field language, I think I had
a deep longing to legitimate
myself as a ChineseAmerican, though this
strategy was bound to fail
since I would never have a
native speaker's grasp of the
language (and because I am
largely tone deaf, which
causes a lot of problems
when trying to speak a
language that has four tones,
each of which can alter the
meaning of a word drasti?
cally). When my father died
four or five weeks into the
or "pastiche"effect of postmodernity,thisexperimentin frag?

mentationis an attemptto denaturalizethe frame.A reader
who perseveresbeyondthe initialnuisanceof havingthe nar?
rativeshe's reading?whether personal, theoretical,or ana?
lytical?interruptedbyother competingnarrativesmightfind
that the constantstartsand stopsraisequestionsof authority,
motivation,dominance,and voice. I am hoping that the con?
stantdisruptionswill continuallymove the readerin and out
of differentframes,opening up differentperspectiveson the
same subject,necessarilyfragmented.
Experimentingwith the textualfragmentationof my own
narratives?personal, analytical, and theoretical?accords
with my desire to query the political implications of frag?
mented subjectivityand women's multiplicity.In her work
on the textual and methodological implications of the
postmodernistbelief that all texts are partialand historically
and culturallypositioned, YvonnaS. Lincoln articulatesthe
liberatorypotential as well as the gravechallenges of writing
our multiple selves into text:

251

course, I dropped out of the
class and never had the
courage to go back to it.
I have always been
sensitive about language,
or
more specifically, dialect

and accent. Having grown
up in Southern California, I
sound a bit like a "Valley
Bendix 1997) andthe notionof an integrated,identifiableself

(e.g., BakhurstandSypnowich1995;Giddens1991;Hall and
du Gay 1996;LashandUrry1994;McLaren1997).But what
happenswhen ourtheoriesbecomedisembodied?Thatis,
whathappenswhen we thinkone thingandfeel another?
MichaelHerzfeldgives a wonderfulexampleof this sort
in the
of disjunctureas he considersautoethnography
contextof his fieldworkandresearchon Greekculture,
politics, and nationalism(1997). He begins by ponderingthe
Girl," though not as much as

I used to. When I graduated
from college in 1990, I
seeming contradictionsin self-constructionamonghis field

consultantsandthen turnshis musingsupon himself and his
own "paradoxesof the self." He tells a storyfromhis
moved to Washington, D.C.,

for a non-paid internship
with a radical women's
adolescence,a periodin which he began to question"the

absolutistclaims of Jewish identitypolitics (including
Zionism)"(181). Herzfelddescribesin sharpdetail and deep
health advocacy group. The

fact that it was non-paid
meant that I had to moon?
emotionhis being completelyoverwhelmedby his

experienceof Verdi'soperaNabucco?the story of the
light waiting tables. The first

place I worked was Houli?
Israelites'redemptionfrom exile underNebuchadnezzar.He

then narratesthe manyothertimes throughouthis life that
this specific piece of music affectedhim intensely.
han's (a national chain

restaurant), and I had some
regular customers, among
them a couple who always
requested my section. After
their first few times in my
section,
became
wanted
their reasoning
perfectly clear: they
to listen to me talk.
At one point, they actually

said, "Kim, will you talk for
us? You sound just like
Hilary on The Fresh Prince
[M]ultiple selves require multiple texts. It might be the

case that for manysocial scientists,movingawayfrom the
discursiveconventionsof our own historieswillbe experi?
ments, only partiallyrealized,as we make text a form of
play.We will have to find ourselvesand our voices, since
breakingout of our scholarly"nativelanguages"andlearn?
ing new ones to match our new commitmentswill not be
easy. (1997:42)
just love
to
you talk." Of
listening
course, being told that you're
a "Valley Girl" when you're
trying to be a serious radical
feminist health reformer isn't
While Lincoln argues for multiple texts in the literal sense

(i.e., publishing in a number of different places that reach
the best news.

I was telling this story to
a friend who's been helping
me think through the ideas
tellectuallyand personally.
At the same time, it strikes me that the very presenta?
tion of textualfragmentation?thatis, whichnon-standardlay?
out we might decide to invoke?also influences the ways
of Bel Air?we
different audiences), I want to argue for multiple texts?as

representativeof multiple selves?within the same overarch?
ing textual product as another wayof focusing attention on
questionsof how fragmentedsubjectivitygets workedout in?

252
KimberlyJ.
Lau
for this essay, and he said,

"Oh, that's really interesting,
because Hilary is presented
Ultimately,it is Herzfeld'swillingnessto considerhis

emotionalresponseto Nabuccoas a paradoxin conjunction
with his intellectualstanceagainstnationalismthatallows
as non-ethnic/'
him to identifyand understandwhatstimulateshis own
One might
the
that
all
Fresh
argue
of
Bel
Air
Prince
characters,
except for Will Smith (who
plays the homeboy from
Philly), are deracialized. But
what makes Hilary a great
comparison is the fact that
is
her deracialization
completely naturalized
through the use of her
localized "Valley Girl" accent,
whereas the other characters are
more clearly deracialized
through class status, dress,
and formal use of Standard
English (and in the butler's
case, British English). In fact,
intellectualinterestsand commitments.He writes,"I 'know'

thatnationalismis not 'natural,'but cultural,constructed,
andcontrived;and yet I am still moved by the memoryof
thatFlorentinenight_Why,
then, shouldmy skepticism

be unable,even today,to stem the joyous tearsthatthe
strainsof Nabuccoevoke in me with undiminished
force?... At some level to explainthe paradoxaway is to

betraythe emotionsthathave guidedme to my present,
intenseinterestin such questions"(1997:182).
In my own case, I hope to investigatethe same
question?what happenswhen we thinkone thing and feel
another?by tryingto make sense of the disjuncturebetween
and
my own intellectualcommitmentto poststructuralism
desire
for
some
sort
of
cultural
my personal
authenticity.
Framingmy experiencesin the broadercontextsof both
ethnicand academiccultures,I seek ways of understanding
she is the only character who

speaks with a "Valley" accent.
in whichthe text is interrupted,disrupted,reconceptualized,
and thus affects the potential waysin which different per?
More recently, in Salt Lake
City where I now live, I've
had what I can only call a
spectives and voices emerge with different levels of author?

ity.When I first began playingwith these ideas, I imagined
creating three equal columns of text; however,that configu?
"weird" experience
involv?
ing the Asian American
ration fed "naturally"

into a hierarchyin which the columns
were likely to be rankedfrom left to right given the fact that
character
Ling on the
show Ally McBeal.
One Monday night I was out
with a friend who was taking
me to his parents' house
where several of his brothers
we read English and other Westernlanguages in that order.
television
Moreover,it seemed too easyfor readers,who would simply

be able to read column one, go back to read column two,
and then finish with column three. Such a layout was not
insistent enough on disruption,on breaking,on shifting at?
live. As we were walking

into the house he said, "We
just missed the Monday
night ritual." "Family Home
Evening?" I asked ("Family
Home Evening" or "Family
Night" is a Mormon practice
tention among competing/complementary narratives.Of

course, it is impossible to control how a reader reads a text,
and a reader may choose to read this alternativeconfigura?
tion narrativeby narrative,but I am hoping that this choice
of presentation will encourage as much simultaneity and
interruption as possible.
Literarywritersand poets have long been playingwith
textual layout (e.g., Momaday1969 and Hollander [1969]

253
of spending family time

together at home on Mon?
my own experiencesnot as atypicalbut, rather,asfairly

typical, therebytouchingon some of the theoreticaland
day nights). "Nope, Ally

McBeal. My dad and my
brothers love Ling." This
political implicationsof such disjuncture.

Of course,othershave broughtthe personalto bearon
the academic.Morethanten years ago, DonnaHaraway
seemed
a bit like an odd
thing to say, but I figured

that it just must have been a
and I
strange coincidence,
didn't give it much thought.
A few weeks later, I ran
into his brother and some of
his brother's friends; I think
they were talking about their
work when I walked up, but
after initial greetings, they
immediately began talking
about Ally McBeal and
about how "hot" Ling is.
This time it definitely struck
advocatedwhat she called "situatedknowledge"as a way of

writingourselvesinto our scientifictexts so as to producea
localized sense of objectivityto replacethe moretraditional
notion of scientific objectivity,what she refersto as the
"God'seye" position (1988). But Harawaydid not just push
the idea of situatedknowledgewithoutrecognizingthe ways
in which it forcedthe scholarinto a muchmorevulnerable
position:"Locationis aboutvulnerability;locationresists
the politics of closure,finality"(590).
Similarlyin the social sciences, the move to situate
oneself in one's text and to foregroundthe cultural
constructednessof the texts themselveshas been underway
for quite some time (e.g., Beharand Gordon1995; Bochner
andEllis 1996; Cliffordand Marcus1986; Reed-Danahay
1996;Tierneyand Lincoln 1997), inspiredat least in partby
me as more than coinciden?

tal. I have run into my
friend's brother several
times, and each time the
has somehow
conversation
traveled to Ally McBeal and
specifically to Ling.
I was telling one of my
colleagues about this
because I found it to be at
once hilarious, offensive,
and just plain weird. She
didn't think much of it,
saying that in her experience
as a lesbian people often try
to make conversation about
some lesbian they know, a
sort of immediate
also hilarious
connection.
(though
and offensive)
This talk doesn't
make my life with Ling any

less disturbing.
1991); folkloristsand anthropologistshave developed a sys?

tem of ethnopoetics and experimentedwith textuallayoutas
a possible means of approaching oral performance on a
written page (e.g., Hymes 1981; Mills 1991; Tedlock 1983).
But only more recentlyhave some social scientific and com?
municationsresearchersreallybegun to experimentwithtex?
tual layout as a way of unhinging their work from a realist
tendency.Patti Lathertouches on preciselythis point in de?
scribing the logic behind her and her co-researcher'sdeci?
sion to break with traditional textual forms in writing?
collaborativelywith the women they interviewed?their book
on women livingwith HIV/AIDS:
Rubbingagainstthe sortof stubbornmaterialityin which
Benjamin'sinterestwasa rescuingof philosophyfrom ab?
straction,the practicesthat Chris[her co-researcher]and
I developed in our studyof women livingwith HIV/AIDS
grew out of our effort to write a K-Martbook [accessible
to all readers] that assembledfragmentsthrough which
one could read and then reread one's way into some

254
KimberlyJ.
Lau
feministworkto rethinkthe bias implicitin most research

Living in Utah certainly
makes me reflect on my
methodologies(e.g., Burtand Code 1995; Harding1987;

MaynardandPurvis 1994; Reinharz1992). Not surprisingly,
it seems to be feministethnographers,autoethnographers,
andresearcherswho are leadingthe way into more
experience of being Asian

American; that is, the
overwhelming whiteness of
emotionallygroundedtexts. For instance,CarolynEllis's

Final Negotiations:A Storyof Love,Loss, and Chronic
the state seems to authorize
Illness (1995) and RuthBehar'sThe VulnerableObserver
my Asian-ness
in a way that is
simultaneously comforting
and discomforting. In April
2000, a woman I barely know
left a message on my voice
mail asking whether I might
(1996) exemplify the use of individualemotionas a means

of queryinglargersocial phenomenawhile simultaneously
decenteringthe authorityof the author/researcher
by making
her vulnerable.
I am not suggestingthatwe simply startaddingour own
voices, our emotions,our storiesto the storiesthatwe write
in the form of ethnographyor theoryor public script.We
be interested in being one of

Utah's delegates to the
have been doing thatfor a long time. WhatI am proposingis
Democratic
an investigationof the disjuncturesthatexist betweenthese
National Con?
vention. This seemed
like a
really intriguing offer, so I

called her back, and she
began to fill me in on why she
spaces and stories,the disjuncturesthatexist becauseof

emotionaldesiresfor intellectualconceptsthatwe have
dismantled,deconstructed,dismissed.I'm not exactly sure
had thought of calling me.

The story goes something
like this: the "Gore people"
the delegates to the
wanted
DNC to represent the

of the states
demographics
were
they
representing
(seemed only fair). Since
there are voting Asian
in Utah, the Gore
"needed" an Asian
Americans
people
American
understandingthat keeps shifting regardingthe workof

living with HIV/AIDS_The text turns back on itself,
puttingthe authorityof its own affirmationsin doubt, an
undercuttingthatcausesa doublingof meaningsthatadds
to a senseof multivalenceandfluidities.(Lather1997:254)
Creating such a multivalent and fluid text necessarily
decentersthe author(s)/researcher(s)in anyattemptto write
culture and to representidentities.
among the
delegates, and I was the only
Asian American this woman
could think of.
Of course (and those of
us who believe in the
While I am experimentingwith this sort of textual frag?

mentationand non-standardlayoutthroughautoethnography
limited to my own texts?thereby reducing the number of
voices competing to sharestoriesand space on the pages (al?
though I certainlywouldnot argue that individualshave only
one voice; in fact, part of my point is that a single individual
democratic process should

be reassured by this), the
woman could not simply
choose me to be one of
Utah's delegates. And,
has competing subjectivities)?clearly this is a method for

writingculturethatwouldworkwell for more traditionalfield
researchand reporting, as it allowsand encourages the co?
existence of multiple voices in waysthat are not necessarily
filteredthroughthe author's/researcher'sframe(s) (see Aus-


because
I am not involved
at
all in party politics in Utah, I

had missed the filing
deadline for declaring that I
would "run" to be one of the
the
delegates. However,
Gore people had assured
this woman
that she would
have some final say in

determining the slate of
delegates because they
wanted
her to have enough

"flexibility" to ensure that
the delegates were ethni?
cally diverse and representa?
tive of Utah. In the end, I
was not chosen (by the
woman)
to be one of Utah's
delegates to the Democratic

National Convention
255
how we go aboutdoing this, but it seems like an intriguing
challengeand a worthwhileendeavor.
Additionally,I hope to avoid furtheringsome sort of
separationof mind (in the form of intellectualtheory-making
and abstraction)and body (the emotionaldesirefor an
authentic?in my case, ethnic?identity), but I am also
completelyunableto ignorethe very seriousdifferences
operatinghere. Why am I continuallystrugglingto conform
to my intellectualpositions,to overcomefeelings of
inauthenticityso as to be an "honest"or "true"academic?
Why am I tryingto theorizemy emotionaldesire to have
some sort of classifiable,authenticethnic identity?
Perhapsin askingourselvesthe questionswe ask
others?that is, if we admitan emotionaldesire for an
integrated,whole self?we can begin to theorizethe
importantand odd hybriditythatexists betweenthe
academicscholarwho deconstructsintegratedidentityand
the individualwho desires an authenticself. Is it possible
thatin recognizingand revealingthe manyhybriditiesof our
own experiences?in my case, East/Westand academic/
because, at least in part, the

former Chair of the Utah
Democratic
Party is an Asian
American.
tin 1996; Fox 1996; Hamera 1996; Lather 1997; and Tanaka
1997 for good examples).
In 1997,
I participated
in
organizing an Okumura
Family Reunion. All of the
Whether representing the multiple voices belonging to

manypeople or those belonging to one person, textualfrag?
mentationand non-standardformatscan begin to enact their
own postmodernlogic (and theory) of fragmentedsubjectiv?
seven sisters were still alive,

as were two of their broth?
ity and decentered intellectual authority.However,by in?

corporatingmultivocalityinto a single textual product, such
ers. Most of them have
experimentalwritingalso movesbeyondmere fragmentation

toward a fluidity that still acknowledges the self as socioculturalconstructionwhile also gesturingtowardsomething
families,
and there were
probably close to 125

people at the reunion.
more integratedthan fragmentation.
Given my early history

with the seven sisters, I am
extremely close to the
Okumura clan. And yet,
once at the reunion, sur?
Most importantly,however,as Anzaldua'sBorderlands/La

Frontera
and Taussig'sTheMagicof theStatesuggest,texts that
can enact their own theories carrya certain political impor?
tance. In this specific case, seeking to move beyond frag?
mented subjectivityto a more fluid subjectivitymight be a
rounded
positivechallenge to contemporaryidentitypoliticsthat con?

tinue to insist on fixed categories and commodified/
commodifiableidentities.
by all these
relatives, I had an odd
sensation of difference.

256
KimberlyJ.
Here, with my family, where

one would expect to fit in
most easily and comfortably,
I felt a certain unease and
"out of place"-ness. It was
months later, when we were
looking at photos from the
reunion, that I realized that I
am so clearly physically
marked by mixed ethnicity.
Lau
everyday?we could createa dialoguewith ourselvesthat

mightteach us somethingaboutthe natureof postmodern
(ethnic)identityand our academicfascinationwith it?
and experimenting
Readingand writingautoethnography
with textualfragmentationand formattingmighthelp
illuminatesome of the ways in which East/WestandWest/
East culturalflows?first as embodiedpersonalexperiences
and lateras intellectualconstructions?delimitthe contours
of academicdisciplineslike FolkloreandAsian American
Studies,disciplinesinvestedin identitypolitics. By
Almost everyone at the

Okumura family reunion
was Japanese-American.
providinganother,morepersonallypoliticizedperspective,
this sort of ethnographymay enableus to enrichthe methods
by which we translateculturalknowledgeacross groups,
What is particularly
striking about this example is
disciplines,countries,and continents.
that it occurs in Hawaii,

where hybridity and multi?
racial ity are probably more
common than not. In Hawaii,
Japanese and Chinese and
Portuguese and Native
Hawaiians and whites inter?
marry in much the same way
that their languages, their
foods, and their customs blend
To follow Irigaray'slead once again, I want to suggest a

pleasurein multiplicityand openness, both in terms of sub?
jectivity (whetherone's own or that of those being "studied"
and/or "represented")and in terms of meaning. That is, I
want us to begin to shift our scholarlyparadigmsso that we
to produce interesting and

compelling examples of
multiculturalism. It is in
might revel in the denial of singularmeaning, the denial of

representationas culturaltranslation.Irigaray'smove to ren?
is an
der pleasurableLacan'sconcept of desire-as-insatiable
inspiring act that demands our attention because it re-situ?
Hawaii that I feel most at

home, that I feel most flattered
ates pleasurein that never-endingapproach,in proximity,in

between.
Wemight likewisetake a certainpleasurein knowing
to be considered a local.
These two examples?
that knowledge is constitutive, made between and among

voices and narrativesand interpretations.Multivocalityis an
especiallyimportantmode of writingwhen we're theorizing
the movement towardbut not
(and practicing)representation;
the Okumura family reunion

and my general sense of
so
ease in Hawaii?capture
the
wonderfully
complex
and paradoxical nature of
external
self-construction,
constructions of one's
subjectivity, and the general
fluidity of postmodern
identity politics.
to meaning stands as an important reminder that we must

take heed when doing ethnographythat (even unintention?
ally)givesthe impressionof culturaltranslation,of transform?
ing something"foreign"or "exotic"or "other"into something
understandable.Instead,we muststriveto maintainthe sense
of nearcomprehension,to glimpsethe insightsthatconstantly
push us beyond, not to possession or totalitybut into new
and infinitelyexpanding realms.

257
Notes
I would like to thank Kathryn Stocktonfor her generosity, patience, and keen intellect in
helping me better understand the many layers of Irigaray's essays. I would also like to
thank Michael Abadi, Regina Bendix, Meg Brady, and Joy Sather-Wagstaff for talking
through?and thus enriching?the ideas in this article. Thanks, too, to Mary Ellen Brown
and J/^Journal of Folklore Research for undertaking the rather challenging task of
laying out and copyfitting this article.
1. See Reed-Danahay 1997 for an extensive discussion of the history and de?
velopment of autoethnography as both practice and product, as well as Bochner
and Ellis 1996, Neumann 1996, and Okely and Callaway 1992 for more detailed
discussions.
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Experimental Autoethnography

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Experimental Autoethnography

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This Text Which Is Not One: Dialectics of Self and Culture in Experimental Autoethnography

Author(s): Kimberly J. Lau

This content downloaded from 129.241.61.254 on Fri, 24 May 2013 05:17:50 AM

I like to think of myself as

Folklore, as an academicdisciplineand a public practice,

else I know, I was born to

narrativesto understandthe culturaltraditionsand practices

generation JapaneseAmerican woman from

intendto push the boundariesof thattraditionby fore?

groundingthe fragmentedsubject?in this case, myself?

New Jersey. My mother?she

West and West/Eastculturalflows throughautoethnography.

the seven sisters. My grand?

product?marriesthe "ethnographicimpulsethat looks

are the seven Okumura

The title of this experiment in textually fragmented

lived with my grandmother

linked to women's lips, a metaphor with a double entendre

seven sisters have brothers

other set) and the waysin which theywritethe body through

Journal of FolkloreResearch,Vol. 39, Nos. 2/3, 2002

This content downloaded from 129.241.61.254 on Fri, 24 May 2013 05:17:50 AM

think of my early life and my

outward,at worldsbeyondtheirown, as a meansof marking

four generations of women

cal impulsethatgazes inwardfor a storyof self, but

grandmother at that time?

ultimatelyretrievesa vantagepoint for interpretingculture"

men, and we were sur?

1969) and in W. E. B. Du Bois's articulationof "double

us sashimi and takuan for

dinner, homemade bento for

seeks to make sense of the often contradic?

"Seven sisters" is also

real influenceon the politics of representationand

Japanese or Hawaiian game

ethnic autobiography,fiction, memoir,and texts thatidentify

requires extreme luck

For Irigaray,the metaphor of the lips is also important

must draw seven sets of

matching pairs from the

and a caressingthat never fuses: "Woman'touches herself

Thus,withinherself,she is alreadytwo?but not divisibleinto

This content downloaded from 129.241.61.254 on Fri, 24 May 2013 05:17:50 AM

This Text Which Is Not One

with crisp singles just for

I've reminisced quite a bit

emotionalattachmentto them, but also becausethey help

generation JapaneseAmerican women whose

illustratesome of the culturalhybridities?the transcultural

entirelynaturalizedas I was growingup. As for many of us,

laborers and whose parents

individualswithinthose communitiesas well.

traditions,in the form of materialartifacts.But what

He would take his big

the propane stove, and he

its passage in and through the other" (254-55, emphasis in

were having in the wok. He

in an attempt to re-envisionand rearticulatewoman not as

This content downloaded from 129.241.61.254 on Fri, 24 May 2013 05:17:50 AM

tripe, sometimes even fishstomach soup. Then he

pass it around and

foods my date was willing to