Autoethnography

Autoethnography In "Arts of the Contact Zone," Mary Louise Pratt introduces a term very unfamiliar to many people. This term, autoethnography, means the way in which subordinate peoples present themselves in ways that their dominants have represented them. Therefore, autoethnography is not self-representation, but a collaboration of mixed ideas and values form both the dominant and subordinate cultures. They are meant to address the speaker's own community as well as the conqueror's. Pratt provides many …

…with all peoples of the world, whether past or present, near or far. Guaman Poma and Manuel, two very different people from very different time periods, will always be in connection with one another because they share being a part of the subordinate group in a dominant-subordinate relationship. Autoethnographic texts do not address and affect just one side of that relationship, but both sides. Pratt proves this idea in her piece. Bibliography Ways of Reading