3. Revealing the hidden voice through autoethnography

Upon examining the arrangement of the words, I discover that I have shaped the selected prose into an outline contour of a voluptuous woman with breasts, a waist and rounded hips, albeit two dimensional. Upon this discovery, I am compelled to go back through the original photographs and program notes to examine what other possible images could reflect this notion of a feminine principle or identity, or an entity, or indeed my female sense of self?

Using these distorted photographs as a stimulus for my narrative in poetic form (Austin, 1996), I begin to critically identify or recognise Akosua Tweba, in many forms. She is the ancestral name given to me at my traditional Ghanaian naming ceremony in 2003 by my former mother in law, who is the grand daughter of this great woman. I can recognise her many female forms, similar to the ancient figurines devoted to the Great Earth Mother who is described as the interconnection between every living thing” (Starhawk, 1988). In Ghana ‘She’ is a goddess named, Mawu and is considered to be the female side of God (Lerner, 2002). Often depicted as the Moon, she represents all the ‘mysteries of life’ (Lerner, 2002). Like a wave breaking, I remembered that there is a ‘moon’ on the traditional African blue cloth worn in the performance. My past memory whirls me back to the local Kotokraba market in Cape Coast. This cloth seemed to dance on the shelf before my eyes, as it’s repetitive patterns leapt out towards me in a split second, before the Ghanaian woman selling the cloth, caught my desire for the white circular motif set in a vivid blue colour. As I begin to recall all the unifying artistic elements of the aesthetics that frame Children of the Blue Light, I begin to distinguish the rich reservoir within the mese-on-scene as a source to search for a feminine principle.

I want to put myself at the centre of my research by examining how my choreographic process has empowered me as a woman, whose sexuality was stolen from me as a little girl. My passion towards traditional African dance presented a very powerful image of the feminine. Yet I chose to juxtapose this notion by performing the role of a captured enslaved woman whose power was taken away from her. Upon this discovery, I am compelled to go back through the original film, photographs and program notes, to examine what other possible images could reflect this notion of a feminine identity for the purpose of reclaiming (Bass & Davis, 1988) my sense of womanhood. I will critically examine my intimate sense of self as a woman and how I constructed my narrative in response to the autobiographical photo stories that were composed in response to my intimate act of improvisation that erupted as an epiphany whilst in the re-enactment of an enslaved African woman and as a dancer painted blue, who made a film in Ghana, who is also a white Australian mother, of a mixed race talented musician, who is a young twelve year old boy living with me on the Surf Coast of Victoria, Australia.

Writing this extended sentence reveals to me that I live in an intricately woven and complex web of interrelated multiple realities. No wonder I am held captive and fascinated by spiders weaving their webs in moonlight. They are really just a reflection of my life in the ‘process.’ I recall in 1981, as part of my Higher School Certificate in Dance, creating and performing a dance about my fear of spiders. The whole stage was a myriad of elastics. Except the intention of my choreography was that I was the predator of a vulnerable much smaller creature that was trapped.  As a beginning choreographer, unbeknown to myself at the time, I was in fact safely performing my fear from being silenced by a protective authority figure. I felt powerful dancing in black ‘pointe’ shoes, symbolizing the many creative ways of dancing in the air as a spider, making my own decision on when to pounce! However, I did not see as I do now, that I was revealing my childhood trauma of being ‘trapped’ and ‘silenced’ into oppression.  Post-modern ethnographers remind us that “writing ethnography is cultural construction, not cultural reporting” and it is “always a construction of the self as well as of the other” (Stacey 1991:115). Since “all knowledge is socially constructed,” as a researcher, I then become the “instrument of data collection and interpretation” and play a central role in creating this knowledge (Foltz and Griffin, 1996:302). I am the subject matter and my ‘matter’ is subjective. A supportive family environment, unbeknown to my situation, along with a privileged education with opportunity for expressive and independent thinking through the arts, opened the door to my silenced childhood trauma and led me to creatively weave a web of choreographic expression through the dance. My body became the vehicle to voice my silence. This validated my physical body.

I consider my Masters thesis to be a write of passage and to be an initiation, where my ‘self’ reacted to the ‘situation’ of epiphany and sacred space. I became the “vehicle of meaning” (Gunn, 1982:23). This epiphany gave me a ‘presence’ in what Gunn describes as, “the juncture between the known and the unknown.” I like to describe this mysterious ‘place’ as the Blue Light. It seems to me that it is not dissimilar to how I have witnessed fetish priestesses in Ghana when they become vehicles of meaning for their community when they channel their ancestral spirits through their body while in the intimate act of improvisation. Pico Iyer (1998) spent much of his life moving between diverse cultural locations much like myself. In his autobiography of travelling in contemporary Asia, he accords that often “places to some extent remake us,” and “recast us in their own images, and the selves they awaken may tell us as much about them as about ourselves” (1998:26). When I digest this statement, I cannot help but feel that Akosua Tweba as my ‘Ancestor by name’ is making her presence be known to me. After all, I participated in the naming ceremony that was a ritual to celebrate my Ghanaian connection to ‘place.’ Somehow she entered my being, or has she been there all along? Either way, it makes me propose many questions about my identity. What I do know is that this ‘situation’ provided a ‘presence’ where I was able to create “an interior dialectic of place and self” (Gunn, 1982:23). I have integrated Akosua Tweba into my being. She is part of my inner landscape that keeps me rooted to the earth and connected to the universe. She is my Ghanaian ancestor who makes sure that decisions I make about contemporary Africa are from a place of integrity and respect, that is, “Sankofa.” According to Adolph Agbo (1999:1), Sankofa is a symbol of “positive reversion and revival” that means go back, “Sanko” and take, “Fa.” It signifies the importance of “returning in time to bring to the present useful past cultural values, which are needed today.” Agbo purports that “progress is based on the right use of the positive contributions of the past. It teaches that there is wisdom in learning from the past because it helps in constructing your future.” I resonated so much so, with this symbol, that before I began manifesting Children of the Blue Light in 2007, I had this sensuous symbol tattooed ‘behind’ on the ‘base’ of my spine. 

Slide 6: Sankofa Adinkra symbol of positive reversion

To me, it represents pure love in a constant state of change in search for a balance that consistently expands outwards and inwards simultaneously. It represents my respect for a universe of peace and harmony. I feel ‘in’ love with this notion. It provides me with a calm affect, when and at the same time it dances in front of me. It has, like Pico Iyer accords, “recast” me in it’s “own image” and “awakened” much about myself as well as the respect of traditional Ghanaian culture. Today, after all the Colonial powers of the past, this ancient Adinkra symbol prevails along with the cultural richness of Ghana.     

“It teaches people to cherish and value their culture and avoid its adulteration” (Agbo, 1999:1)    

I thoroughly feel motivated now to write about my desires and fears now that I can recognise “how an autobiographical impulse” can shift the “observer’s gaze inward toward a self as a site for interpreting cultural experience” (Lather, 2008:369). Surely my skin colour does not stop me from this examination but rather places me in a new perspective to “look at myself from anew” (Lather, 2008:369). Is this a privileged voice? Yes, I believe so because I have the luxury of ‘choosing’ to go overseas albeit on a journey of self-discovery! This is a story of a white woman who reclaimed and empowered her female identity by dancing in black culture in the ‘Mother’ Africa. I feel, see and value the guiding strength of such awesome iconic images. I am not so sure how many African women have the ‘privileged voice’ to firstly, travel abroad, let alone feel empowered by images of our Western Classical Ballet?  Why would they when they already have them at their foundational roots? However, that is not my question to be considered here other than I feel privileged that my migrant educated parents “slaved” their “guts out” (to use my father’s terminology), to give me a good education that validated my talent of dance and supported me to develop my skills as an artist and arts educator.  

“As a form of institutional and scientific investigation, ethnographic reports privileged the “neutral” voice of the writer over the authority of the subjective and personal experience. Yet, elements of fascination, adventure, romance, and desire leak through, suggesting how ethnographic discourse functions as location for addressing issues of identity, place and uncertainty in modern life (Pratt, 1986:32).  

Issues with my own ‘modern’ life have motivated me to turn inward to study my own world by stepping out into another culture that opened me up to a new world or dimension that I call the Blue Light. However, it cannot exist without a dark and light side as it is a constant shift between the two hues continuously transforming and cycling in search of equilibrium, balance and harmony. One way of finding these bridges is by crossing the boundaries using music and dance. I believe this form of expression brings a possibility of healing to the planet after the colonization into a Post-modern world. In making the film Children of the Blue Light, the process helped to bring the division of all my multiple selves closer together.  Writing autobiographically allowed me to turn ‘inward’ to study my own world by travelling to an “other” world more mysterious than my own. By doing so I can imagine myself as part of their world and therefore, they occupy a place in my story also.  

“…ethnography is a genre of writing that relies on that mysterious other who exits “out there.” And this tension only becomes confounded when we acknowledged how much “out there” looks a lot like “in here” (Neuman, 1996:182).  

Travelling to Africa helped me search for my identity. Giving birth to a child of mixed race motivated me to travel to Ghana. I found a voice in this country to carry particular “concrete dimensions of my individual experience that may offer a point of orientation” (Neuman, 1996:183). The situated place where it erupted was outside my own culture but I had to come back home ‘inside’ my own culture to understand it and then further within my ‘inner landscape’ that has only come ‘out’ through this method of inquiry using the response data from my aesthetic critique of my photo stories and poetry. I invite you, the reader, to use the interchangeable metaphors of Dark, Blue and Light to explain the changes that took place within my self-discovery process.  

“ Autoethnography is an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural. Back and forth autoethnogaphers gaze, first through an ethnographic wide-angle lens, focusing outwards on social and cultural aspects of their personal experience; then, they look inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract, and resist cultural interpretations” (Bochner and Ellis, 2000:739)  

By shifting backwards and forwards and cycling in, around, and through a metaphoric sense of dark, blue and light as represented in slide 2 Epiphany, I am drawn towards autoethnography as a method of inquiry as it has provided a framework to make some meaning out of my hidden dark secret.