Reconsidering table talk: Critical thoughts on the relationship between sociology, autobiography and self-indulgence

Abstract

Those who use autobiographical perspectives in the practice of sociology and related disciplines have noted, with concern, the association of their work with self-indulgence (Devault, 1994; Jackson, 1990; Okely, 1992; Kreiger, 1991). This paper elaborates this concern by directing analytic attention to the nature of the charge of self-indulgence. The paper reads as an autobiographical defense of autobiographical sociology. It uses the naming of my own work as self-involved as a point of departure for explicating the implications of this regulatory practice. The device of irony is used to expose how self-indulgence, as a critique invoking highly insular relations of readership, authorship and subject/object distinction, relies on the conventions of a traditional masculine academic discourse.