ABSTRACT
We may distinguish, somewhat, autoethnograph[ies] from memoirs, autobiographies, and the like in several ways. A critical stance, a marriage of scholarly literature and subjective recollections of occurrences, perhaps an attempt at some sort of pedagogical or even dogmatic project: All of these may be implicated in autoethnographies but usually not in memoirs. Memoirs are personal recollections, teasing at the edges of larger truths; autobiographies generally are centred upon someone who already has achieved a reason for fame. By virtue of these characteristics, relative to autoethnography, the former is more self-centred, and the latter is more public. One of the most salient markers of distinction between these three genres is the critical relationship between the author’s own story or troubles and the wider culture. In useful autoethnography, a clear synergistic balance exists. I trace this aspect of the autoethnographic act back through Norman Denzin to C. Wright Mills, in which individual private troubles resonate with, relate to, or inform, one or more key public issues (cf., Mills 1959; Denzin 1989, 1997, 2013). The dance between public and private is always a critical component of contemporary autoethnographers’ practice.
