FICTION IN-BETWEEN: AN INTRODUCTION TO AUTOTEHNOGRAPHY

This article proposes a discussion of autoethnography as an instrument of decolonizing the academe and creating spaces for the voices of the under-represented and their lived experiences, often queer and/or non-white. This discussion is inspired by Octavia E. Butler’s speculative fiction and is part of a larger doctoral project exploring the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and religion in her earlier, more classic, science fiction and her later, previsionary, speculative fiction. The objective is to lay out a theoretical foundation to the contention that Butler’s fiction is equivalent to self-mapping - and thus autoethnographic -, and that it engages the minority woman and queer reader in a similarly autoethnographic journey. The present article is a theoretic preamble to this contention. An extended version of this article is aimed to be included in my doctoral thesis, where these theories of autoethnography will be tested on Butler’s Bloodchild, Parable of the Sower, and Fledgling.