Visual Autoethnography: Reconstructing the "Other" in Edward Said's After the Last Sky

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate Edward Said's “After the Last Sky” as a specific instance of visual autoethnography. Said returns to the critical potential of autoethnography in order to examine ethnographic photographs about Palestinian people – images used to document patterns of Palestinian culture, usually within discourses of the ‘other'. Said engages with autoethnography as a critical identity discourse which tries to comprehend the complexity of fragmented identities informed by dislocation. Autoethnography is the ideal method of choice, because it allows Said to highlight the Palestinian culture that is often voiceless within the dominant media discourse. It is compelling in part because it reveals in vivid details those whose presence might not be noticed if they spoke abstractly. This paper will deal with the way in which this autoethnography, in focusing on local voices with specific histories rather than on universal principles, has created a performative discourse played before others.