Die Madeleine, die Erinnerung und das zufällige Denkmal

Abstract

Summary: The madeleine, the memento and the accidental monument - This paper addresses the subject of diaspora from an auto-ethnographic perspective defined as a social constructionist project that rejects the deep-rooted binary oppositions between the researcher and the researched, self and others, process and product (Ellingson and Ellis 2008). It is a 'layered account' that makes no attempt to retrospectively trace the procedural nature of the author's research in any chronological order (Charmaz 1983). Instead it adopts a series of objects and takes these as frames of containers through which the role of memory and the world of objects are explored. The researcher consciously embeds herself amidst theory and practice by way of an autobiographic account (McIlveen 2008).