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Chapter One
Interpretive Performance Autoethnography
The line of becoming for the majority is consequently an anti-memory, which, instead of bringing back in a linear order specific memories (les souvenirs), functions as a deterritorialising agency that dislodges the subject from her sense of unified and consolidated identity. (Braidotti, 2011, p. 31)
I want to focus on autoethnography as both a methodological frame and what it means to me as a researcher. Reaching back into past trauma is, in and of itself, traumatic.1 As Braidotti suggests, attempting to hold on to a cohesive whole in terms of identity is often difficult when one engages with autoethnography, and this is even more difficult in the face of trauma. Certain methodological elements such as remembering can disrupt, dislodge and deterritorialise a subjective sense of self. This type of research is undertaken in order to find oneâs own truth and the search for that truth lies at the heart of autoethnography. Throughout this chapter, autoethnography is intended to sit alongside the performance methodology described in Chapter Six. This structure enables me to use autoethnography to embody the research whilst also applying it to the minutiae of my experiences. There are several important considerations that come with this type of research methodology, the first of which is that it requires a shift in writing position. Much of what you will read operates from an objective writing position in order for the analysis to be as unbiased as possible. However, because autoethnography foregrounds the subjective over the objective, the personal pronoun âIâ is the dominant writing position when I speak directly of my own experiences.
Autoethnography is a relatively new area of research. Deborah Reed-Danahayâs (1997) Auto/Ethnography is one of the earliest publications in this area, which remains comparatively modest. The process of reflecting and engaging with oneâs own subjective experiences is the foundation of the methodology, a process that has helped writers and researchers come to terms with their own trauma, grief and lived experiences. As is characteristic of, and specific to, autoethnography, there is no separation between observer and observed. Reed-Danahay writes:
Our work as autoethnographers challenges scientific approaches to inquiry that intentionally separates the Observer and the Observed. In challenging this received wisdom that âscienceâ has to equal âseparateâ, we have re-framed the boundaries and relations between Self and Other(s), Actor and Acted-Upon, Author and Story, presenting instead a genre of writing that [âŚ] places the authorâs lived experience within a social and cultural context. (1997, p. 30)
The significance of placing subjective narratives at the heart of research means that people can tell their stories without fear. This is not autobiography, however, as this methodology is a more complex mechanism than saying what has happened to a person at specific points in their life. Rather, autoethnography is the process of identifying subjective experiences and placing them within the socio-cultural frames of the time in order to expose the truth of those experiences. It is not just a way to know the world or a way to know ourselves: it is precisely the parallelism and conjunction of those exteriorities and interiorities that enables a full account of someoneâs turning-points. Carolyn Ellis notes:
Autoethnography requires that we observe ourselves observing, that we interrogate what we think and believe, and that we challenge our own assumptions, asking over and over again if we have penetrated as many layers of our own defences, fears, and insecurities as our project requires. It asks that we rethink and revise our lives, making conscious decisions about who and how we want to be. And in this process, it seeks a story that is hopeful, where authors ultimately write themselves as survivors of the story they are living. (2013, p. 10)
This statement is important because Ellis says, quite rightly, that we must undertake some degree of self-examination. We must dig deep, however painful. It is through this process that healing can be found. I have had to do this. I include three vignettes that detail the start of my story and I offer these as turning-point events for analysis. I can now mark myself as a survivor of the story I am telling but it is specifically because of this research methodology and my musical performance that I can say this. Ellis also states that, âfor many of us, autoethnography has enhanced, even saved, our academic careers. It might not be hyperbole to say that sometimes it has saved our livesâ (ibid.). In my case, that is true.
Autoethnography is an umbrella term that houses a number of variants. When I discovered interpretive performance autoethnography, I knew it would provide the exact framework I needed, especially as it included a performance element. Part of my healing has been to perform in a black metal band, so having the concept of performance embedded within the methodology has been a valuable and empowering research approach. It has meant leaving other methodologies aside but I have come to know a particular Ăcriture Feminine, inasmuch as it tends to focus on womenâs writing. As P. T. Clough states, âI made a choice to abandon the writing of ethnography of other women. I chose instead to set out again to know myself as a woman, as a woman writerâ (2007, p. 6). I now see myself as a feminist autoethnographer, a survivor of domestic violence, a musician and an academic.
In Marilyn Mettaâs âPutting the Body on the Line: Embodied Writing and Recovery through Domestic Violenceâ, she structures her essay much as I have. Epiphanic moments are presented as vignettes surrounded by feminist autoethnographic engagement. This format offers a useful arrangement of subjective experience. She states:
As contemporary feminist scholars, we are constantly wrestling with how we create knowledges in an era where personal stories collide with the cultural, the historical, the political, the embodied, and the imaginary [âŚ] Womenâs autoethnographic writings provide critical spaces for womenâs silenced experiences, voices, and stories to be told, mapped, and shared, and hence, contribute to the ways in which we make knowledge about the world and our senses of place in it. (2013, p. 491)
There is definitely a sense of urgency and significance that autoethnographic texts ask of us: they demand that we pay attention, that we listen rather than respond. My journey from victim to survivor to feminist autoethnographer and black metal performer has not been an easy one and I knew that using my subjective experience would cause me pain as I told people what I have been through.2 This has not been something I relish, and I purposefully omit certain details and names, although the rest appears unabridged. Metta notes:
In breaking my silence about my experience of domestic violence, I inevitably have to disclose my ex-partner as a person who has perpetrated domestic abuse. This has always been a huge risk that many women who have experienced domestic violence face in any disclosure about their perpetrator. While I have taken the necessary steps to protect my ex-partnerâs identity in my research, it is impossible to conceal his identity to people who knew of our relationship. This is one of the many relational ethics that I have had to negotiate between duty of care as a writer/researcher and my relationships with the people involved in my research. (2013, p. 59)
The same concerns also crossed my mind (and I notified my local police) but the need to commit my subjective experience to paper outweighed anything else. My engagement with interpretive performance autoethnography has offered me a joining of feminist autoethnography and performance. Tammi Spry speaks of,
the body in performance is blood, bone, muscle, movement; the performing body constitutes its own interpretive presence, a cultural text embedded in discourses of power [âŚ] disrupting the status quo, uncovering the understory of hegemonic systems. (2011, pp. 18â20)
My autoethnography, presented through my stage performance as physicality and movement, has provided me not only with a healing opportunity but has also enabled my voice to be identifiable amongst the brilliance and hegemonic difficulties of black metal.
Kristeva notes, âany text is the absorption and transformation of anotherâ (1986, p. 37) and my autoethnographic narrative is no different. I must, therefore, choose a starting point. Here are three epiphanic moments that identify experiential markers of my domestic abuse, which overlap with and absorb who I was with who I am becoming.
Autoethnographic Methodological Markers: Exhumation through Catharsis
Vignette 1: I was playing my guitar, working out some new riffs and loving the way my fingers tripped across the fretboard, the agility and dexterity of my hands sculpting the music into differing shades of darkness. Suddenly the amp went quiet. I looked up and saw him towering over me, a heavy scowl across his face. âWhat are you doing?!â he snapped. âI told you I hate you doing that!â He spat fire as he ripped the jack lead from my guitar and stormed out.
Vignette 2: My friendâs band were great. Watching them perform released an excited energy I hadnât realised I had missed. I hadnât seen live music for a while and I was really enjoying myself. I felt him then, standing behind me, face bent towards my ear, saying in low tones, âyouâre behaving like a groupie. Youâre disgustingâ.
Vignette 3: The door slams. âWhy have you got make up on?! Who is it for?! Who are you trying to impress?! Nobody will have you except me. Iâm the best youâre ever going to have and you know it!â I try to respond, my eyeliner shaking in my hand, dripping black drops onto the bathroom floor, pooling at my feet. He backs me up against the wall, hands either side of my head. Suddenly his fist lands a punch on the plaster, just next to my face. âBitch!â
When I met him, it was at a local meeting of the socialist party. I thought that because he identified as a socialist that he had forward-thinking ideologies and praxis. I thought we had a lot in common; we were the same age, liked alternative music and were left-wing in our politics. Within the first month together, I found out he was a final-year student in a different department. I did not like this, as it was a conflict of interest with my job. I tried to end the relationship; I thought calling off such a new relationship wouldnât be particularly traumatic. I was wrong. He employed all manner of tactics, from tearful pleading to threatening to hurt himself. He followed me to work and stopped me on the street, pleading with me to take him back. It was then I knew something was very wrong, but not how bad it was going to get. I also didnât know that heâd already started gaslighting me.
In the year-and-a-half it took me to get out (with the help of the police, friends and a local domestic abuse advocacy centre), I experienced the whole gamut of controlling and manipulative behaviour. Other trauma events that I make mention of here and that I donât wish to remember as vignettes are:
that time he raped me in Barcelona; that time he threw my phone the full length of the lounge because I tried to call the police on him and when I took it into the Vodafone shop the next day and they asked me incredulously what Iâd done to trash my phone, how much I wanted to scream at them for help but didnât; all the times he got jealous of my dogs and refused to let me be with them; that time he screamed in my face that I was nothing; all the times he accused me of cheating; all the times he demanded to check my emails; that time he said I couldnât use social media anymore; that time he humiliated me in the middle of Morrisonâs; that time he threatened my housemate; all the times he controlled the finances; that time he grabbed the back of my trousers as I was leaving for work and demand I change my underwear because he didnât like what I was wearing; that time in Scotland where he grabbed my wrist hard and whispered âdonât you dareâ to stop me from saying hello to a friend I hadnât seen in years; that time he punched someone in a night club and swore it wasnât him (it was); that time he knocked a guy out in a pub for giving me a hug and blamed it on me; that time I caught him hiding in my garden; all the times he stalked me; all the times he scolded me for laughing and âbeing loudâ; that time he accused me of being a groupie at a gig (I was dancing and laughing with friends); that time he slammed the lid of my piano down when I was playing it (I moved my hands just in time); that time when he said that nobody would ever love me; that time he said he was the best I was ever going to get because I was such a disgusting person; that time I was cowering on the sofa as he was shouting at me and my dogs sat with their bodies against me, blocking him and protecting me; all the times he raped me at home; that time when, that time when, that time when ⌠I have never known fear like it. I tried to get out so many times and if I hadnât got out when I did, he would have killed me and my dogs.3
Turning from the specific and individual to the broader picture for the sake of context, the cycle of domestic violence happens in stages: love-bombing, gas-lighting, coercion, abuse/violence/sexual violence and finally remorse. Love-bombing is the initial honeymoon phase: utterly overwhelming, smothering and suffocating. Flowers, chocolate, surprise gifts and surprise visits, endless texts, social media interactions, phone calls and a clear desire to know everything about you from your hopes and dreams to your fears. This is the beginning of the âbait and switchâ that tries to convince you that this is who they are; kind, loving, attentive and focused on you. Academic and counsellor S. Degges-White suggests, â[the love-bombing] surprise appearances [are] designed to manipulate you into spending more time with the bomber â and, not coincidentally, less time with others, or on your ownâ (psychologytoday.com, accessed on April 10, 2020). Love-bombing very quickly begins to feel like stalking. Love-bombing can be understood as a form of grooming, overwhelming the victim with romantic signifiers so as not to raise any alarms. Degges-White goes on,
When someone tells you just how special you are, it can be intoxicating, at first. However, when a person uses such comments to keep your focus trained on him or her, or to keep bringing you back in if youâve started to back off, it could be a case of manipulation. Not everyone who whispers sweet nothings in your ear is a narcissist or predator, of course, but if youâre feeling that something just isnât right about the person or your relationship, these constant reminders of âhow good you are togetherâ â when you suspect that you really arenât â can be an effort to keep you tethered. Itâs often the first line used by a potential abuser.
Love-bombing (also known as glamour gas-lighting) becomes a point of reference as the abuse develops: it acts as a safe haven for the person you still hope the abuser is, deep down. Abusers are also fast movers. They will want to solidify their hold on you, quickly and permanently. Shared bank accounts and a shared home may quickly lead to the victim losing financial independence. This positions the abuser to take greater control: the victimâs comings and goings, who they see and contact will be monitored, and the devices that help them to do this will become a point of contention.
Shea Emma Fettâs article â10 Things Iâve Learned About Gas-Lighting as an Abuse Tacticâ for EverydayFeminism.com offers a personal and succinct account of how gas-lighting unfolds. She states, âgas-lighting is the attempt of one person to overwrite another personâs realityâ. When I have attempted to describe my experience of gas-lighting, Iâve tended to borrow the term âpalimpsestâ from post-colonial theory, meaning an original manuscript that has been rewritten by a colonising and imperialist force. The abuser washes away the script of you and rewrites it with their version of events. You become a haunted house, visited by ghosts of who you once were.
Gas-lighting is not just straight-up manipulation, as Fett notes:
manipulation usually centers around a direct or indirect threat that is made in order to influence another personâs behaviour. Gas-lighting uses threats as well but has the goal of actually changing who someone is, not just their behaviour.
Gas-lighting cocoons manipulation inside a shifting notion of reality. We may not be able to recall the details of an argument as clearly as the abuser appears to, or they may accuse you of saying something that you donât rememb...
