Susan Gannon has an essay on the (Im)possibilities of writing the self locate some of my anxieties of voice subsuming Other locations in my attempts ….

Also useful to what I am thinking through - Melissa Gregg’s work on the “mundane voice” (see her book “Cultural Studies’ Affective Voices”)

In
terms of cultural studies’ relationship to globalization, I want the idea of the
mundane to inject some much needed parochialism into academic work. Now,
parochialism has some bad press, especially the kind Morris herself describes as
characterizing conceptual debate. ‘One consequence of the mundane globaliza-
tion immediately affecting intellectuals’, she writes, is ‘the indignant parochial-
ism of assuming that you always already
know
the political import of this or that
product or practice’ (Morris 1993a, p. 42). I agree with Morris that this kind of
assumed knowledge ‘will not be very helpful in the future’ (1993a, p. 42), and
that one of the best ways to counter it is to use the limitations of our situated
speaking positions more productively. It is precisely because we seem destined
to share a theoretical vocabulary internationally (which is not to say globally)
that we need to work harder to explain how particular concepts work in the
contexts from which we write and speak. In an internet-wired, international
conference-attending, US-led publishing network of interaction, pivotal terms
and theories are too often taken for granted in cultural studies’ everyday. We
need means to habitualize self-reflexivity in our theoretical assumptions and
investigative practices, especially if our goal is to widen the audience for these
concerns in the future.

(Gregg, 2004)

In autoethnography, the authori ty granted to “bei ng there” i s
condensed i n the sel f of the (sel f )researcher who has (at l ast gi ven hi msel f or
hersel f ) the authori ty to speak. However, the “evi dence of experi ence” that the
autoethnographer struggl es to capture i n hi s or her wri ti ng, ri sks overl ooki ng
“questi ons about the constructed nature of experi ence, about how subj ects are
consti tuted . . . about how one’s vi si on i s structured . . . [through] l anguage (or
di scourse) and hi stor y” (Scott, 1991, p. 777). Much autoethnography i s deepl y
connected to the stori es tol d by the body, parti cul arl y pathol ogi zed bodi es. In
these ci rcumstances, unravel i ng or cri ti qui ng autoethnographi c wri ti ng that
rel i es on the “val i di ty of tears” (Lather, 2000, 2001) and the “epi stemol ogy of
emoti on” (Denzi n, 1997) becomes both di ffi cul t (Cl ough, 1997) and neces-
sar y wi thi n a poststructural paradi gm that i s skepti cal of real i st stori es.

(Gannon, 2006)