Section Introduction: Challenges and Futures of Autoethnography

The challenges of autoethnography are in front of us. The field has come of age, all the signifiers are there, a handbook, a journal, a special interest group, annual meetings. This handbook can be read as a manifesto, it opens doors, it is about bringing performance into the equation, about rethinking key terms: autoethnography, ethnography, performance, about the formation of a critical performative cultural politics, about what happens when everything is already performative, when the dividing line between performativity and performance disappears. And autoethnography (there are at least ten different versions of the word; see Denzin, 2018, p. 8). 1 It is about using autoethnography to perform work that leads to social justice, it is about critical discourse that addresses central issues confronting democracy and racism in post-postmodern, post-truth. It is about global life, narrative, and melodrama under the auspices of late neoliberal capitalism.