Mathmagenic: Two Papers, Me in Between

Lilia of Mathmagenic is writing an essay for a special issue on blogging that I'm putting together for Reconstruction and has posted about the process... here is her original posting and below is my response:

Two Papers, Me In Between

Lilia,

This is a powerful beginning--I'm very impressed by your ability to reflect on the process, to reach across the printed page and engage in a dialogic exchange with the authors and to bring a sense of "living" into your writing (the flowers at the end were very effective). After reading this I feel as if I was sitting across the table chatting with you...

This is autoethnography in its essence... viewing knowledge as a "verb"... a process, not a cut-and-dried body of facts, but a mutable and situational experience. Intellectuals interact with knowledge almost as if it were a companion species that shapes us as we shape it.

I'll suggest three of my current favorites of this style of autoethnography (although only Goodall calls it that):

Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire

Donna Haraway's The Companion Species Manifesto

H.L. Goodall's Writing the New Ethnography