The paradox of autoethnography: methodological liberation or neoliberal ventriloquy?

This paper critically examines the relationship between neoliberal academia and autoethnography. Despite its reputation as a transformative and emancipatory method for critiquing the academy, this study exposes a critical irony: academics employing this methodological approach in qualitative inquiry often reinforce the neoliberal ideologies and forms of governmentality they intend to problematise. In contemporary academia, autoethnography is commodified, repackaged and hawked as disclosive, epiphanic narratives and affective evocation for public consumption and self-promotion. Within the corporatised university, autoethnography, in its reconstituted form, ventriloquises neoliberal ideals of market ethos and individual autonomy, undermining its counter-hegemonic potential. By revealing autoethnography’s complicity through (a) commodification, (b) individualism, (c) marketisation, and (d) performativity, this paper problematises its effectiveness as a tool for genuine transformation. It calls for a critical re-evaluation of autoethnography in academia, urging scholars to reclaim its potential for collective action and structural critique.