Multimodal Autoethnographic Sincerity

ABSTRACT

Critically departing from theories of autoethnography, diaspora, and multimodality, this article introduces “multimodal autoethnographic sincerity,” which I define as a critical communication method that puts the researcher’s affective feelings in conversation with their mediated productions of culture. I use multimodal autoethnographic sincerity to further produce knowledge on an ethnographic film, which I filmed in my father’s provincial hometown Kalibo, Philippines. The new autoethnographic cultural critique I contribute to my film’s diasporic inquiries is a mapping of the festival’s transnational analysis against my affective feelings within my own Filipinx evolving body. I demonstrate the heuristic and generative capacities of a multimodal autoethnographic sincerity that makes multiple communication modes (diasporic body, homeland, cultural critique, filmmaking, and writing) in my knowledge production an ongoing intersubjective inquiry into the Philippines, colonialism, and the legacies of U.S. Empire. Ultimately, multimodal autoethnographic sincerity allows researchers to conceive of and methodologically examine diasporic identity as a relational process versus a racial and ethnic essentialism in today’s mobile condition of diasporic peoples.

KEYWORDS:

• Multimodal autoethnographic sincerity
• diaspora
• multimodality
• Filipinx American studies
• autoethnography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I use Filipinx instead of Filipino/a in solidarity with other Filipinx American scholars that promote a relational thinking and disruptive possibility of the “x” in Filipinx American community formations and studies (see Bonus & Tiongson, 2022).

2. The National Communication Association has long offered the Ellis-Bochner Autoethnography and Personal Narrative Award sponsored by the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction and named after communication scholars Carolyn Ellis and Arthur Bochner. Communication’s leadership is further reflected through the two co-founding editors of the Journal of Autoethnography, Tony E. Adams and Andrew F. Herrmann, both communication scholars.

3. Babaylan refers to pre-colonial indigenous Philippine practices in which a shaman/healer mediated between ordinary and non-ordinary realms of reality. Kapwa refers to “shared identity” that links the self and the other.

4. For more scholarship on the festival, see Alcedo (2014); Calopez et al. (2011); Peterson (2011); Reyes-Tinagan (2001).

5. The United Nations Development Program estimates 14–17 million Indigenous people belonging to 110 ethno-linguistic groups living in the Philippines, a nation of 114 million people. Retrieved from: https://www.undp.org/philippines/publications/fast-facts-indigenous-peoples-philippines

6. Grossman, D. (2023, February 21). The Philippines Is America’s new star ally in Asia. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/21/philippines-marcos-bongbong-china-japan-us-alliance-indo-pacific-geopolitics/#:~:text=The%20two%20nations%20announced%20an,Philippines%20to%20handle%20future%20contingencies

7. About 80% of the population is Roman Catholic. The second largest religious population is Muslim, making up 5% and mainly residing in the south. Retrieved from: https://geriatrics.stanford.edu/ethnomed/filipino/introduction/religion.html

8. Austen, I. (2021, May 28). “Horrible history:” Mass grave of indigenous children reported in Canada. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/world/canada/kamloops-mass-grave-residential-schools.html

9. Kalibo is in the Aklan island province of the Philippines. Locals from all the towns of Aklan are called Aklano and speak the dialect of Aklano. This does not apply to the indigenous groups of the island, who represent the Ati tribe.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

George Villanueva

George Villanueva (PhD, University of Southern California) primary inquires are in how marginalized communities of color survive the material realities of structural oppression that have been reproduced along the intersectional social identities of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class. To this end, he researches the role that communication, organizing, media, activism, and expressive culture play in place-based advocacy and social change goals of marginalized communities of color in cities. His methods are interdisciplinary and informed by critical theoretical frameworks in communication, ethnic studies, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and engaged scholarship. He can be found at www.georgevillanueva.com