Writing flows: the self as fragmentary whole

In this chapter, I draw on my own experiences of conducting educational
research in Vietnam and use Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the assemblage
to present a mode of thinking about an autoethnographic Self that is
understood as an event: non-essential and constantly becoming in ways that
are irreducible to the subjective and personal. I argue that the autoethnographic
Self is a product of autoethnographic research; the deed rather than
doer. Not pre-existing, the autoethnographic Self is actualised within the
complex of cultural, social, and historical encounters between the researcher
and the researched, existing in a form of radical alliance from which both
researcher and researched are constantly produced and reproduced, constantly
becoming in ways that remain resistant to representation, meaning,
and understanding.