Picturing Validity: autoethnography and the representation of self?

Abstract

In considering issues of “representation” and “realism,” the visual is inevitably invoked, yet in the current Western episteme, the relationship between the visible and the readable constitutes an enduring problem in which the image is generally subordinate to the text. In this article, the author examines what would happen if the usual relationship between verbal and visual was overturned and images were used to analyze text. In doing this, the author draws on the concept of “reverse ekphrasis” in the creation of a “gallery of validity,” which constitutes an interpretive framework for her autoethnographic research. The author situates this work within an approach characterized as the baroque, arguing that this provides a useful metaphor for qualitative research in the current moment.