Navel-Gazing Breaks the Heart Open: Autoethnography as Love-in-Action

Abstract

This article is an autoethnography as love-in-action in uncertain times. It is an autoethnography that writes into the complicated relationship that I have with my tummy. Through my tummy, I revisit the age-old and tired argument that autoethnography is navel-gazing and narcissistic. I return here because my therapist-self is still contesting that navel-gazing and narcissism are not the same thing and so shouldn’t be coupled together in the critique. Through writing into uncertainty, I find some indignancy and argue that autoethnography that does not navel-gaze is much more likely to be narcissistic because navel-gazing is actually the cure for narcissism.