The self as other: Creating the role of Joni the ethnographer for broken circles

Contemporary discussions of ethnographic research often draw attention to psychological and ethical problems centering on the observing ethnographer. Performance can be a valuable method for working through these problems. This essay describes the ways one performance helped me as an ethnographer work through such problems as objectivity, the marginalizing of the self, and the appropriation of another culture. In particular, it emphasizes how performance led to a more sophisticated understanding of myself as an African American, an academic, and a woman.