Manthia Diawara’s Autoethnographic Forays in Memoir and Film from ‘Counter’ to ‘Strong’ to ‘Beyond’

Abstract

In order to suggest the larger terms, parameters, and limits of autoethnographic method in life narrative, this essay explores three life narratives from filmmaker, writer, and critic Manthia Diawara that engage and exemplify different models of autoethnographic method, and points up the interests and issues raised by each. In the films Rouch in Reverse and An Opera of the World and the memoir/short film In Search of Africa, it makes distinctions among counter-ethnography, 'strong' autoethnography, and the terrain 'beyond' autoethnography and suggests their applicability to the literary memoirs of such writers as Annie Ernaux and Audre Lorde.