Trans-ing Autoethnography: On Poetic Renderings, Fluidity, and Disciplinary Boundaries in Orange and its Rind

Abstract

This paper situates the author’s original poetry collection, Orange and its rind (Appendix A), as an autoethnographic process and product. First, considering the historical relationship of the autoethnographic methodology to the discipline of anthropology, this project is interested in the growing movement of Black, feminist, and/or queer anthropologists who have adopted the method as a “boundary-crossing” tool which can be utilized to question traditional distinctions between ethnographic Self and Other, bounded knowledge hierarchies, and disciplinary distinctions. Secondly, the paper investigates the potentialities of poetry as ethnographic writing. Finally, thinking alongside Orange and its rind, this paper touches on the core driving tension unearthed through the research and creation of the autoethnographic work: between the fluidity of (particularly trans/queer) embodied forms of knowledge, and the defined structures of language.