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Abstract
This essay lays the methodological foundation for a form of autoethnography that I describe as “auto-archaeology.” Auto-archaeology specifies a process by which an autoethnographer relies on institutional artifacts to interpret how a network of power relations affects individual identity formation and maintenance. In this essay, I reference artifacts from high school to demonstrate how institutional structures and discourses constrain and enable heterosexual and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender (LGBTQ) identities. I then consider three key ways that educational structures may better combat institutionalized homophobia.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Heidi Rose, Craig Gingrich-Philbrook, and Scott Dillard for the outstanding feedback they provided. He would also like to thank the following people who helped him navigate the halls of high school: Candice Koern, Fox's high school drama teacher; Laveta Christian, the school's assistant principal; and Joyce and Len Fox
Notes
1. To help distinguish between reconstructed moments of the past presented in situ (“being there”) and instances of scholarly reflection (“being here”), I borrow Tami CitationSpry's “being there”/“being here” sequencing from her essay “Performing Autoethnography.” Spry's organization is an adaptation of CitationGeertz's celebrated distinction of “being there” and “being here.”
2. To ensure the anonymity of my peers and educators, pseudonyms have been used throughout the essay.
3. In Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Sedgwick uses “minoritizing” and “universalizing” as an “alternative (though not an equivalent) to essentialist [and] constructivist” (40). Sedgwick intends her terminology to highlight how essentialism uniquely complicates the lives of gay people.