Learning From Lacan: An Autoethnography Of Career Transition

This development paper emphasises the importance of researcher reflexivity. Previously at BAM we presented an autoethnography of our career transitions interpreting our difficulties in making our voluntary career moves in terms of a series of stages through which we undertook identity-work to overcome forces of identity regulation and achieve an aspired and stable sense-of-self. While this paper was well received and made a contribution to identity theorising, we have, as all autoethnographers should, engaged in ever deeper reflexivity and also in dialogue with peers. As a result, we are engaging with psychoanalytical theorising, particularly facets of Lacan’s work, to reconceptualise our data and further extend our contribution to identity theorising. The Lacanian lens is enabling us to learn that our identities were more regulated than we recognised and unconscious drives and processes can serve to contain subjectivities. We ask delegates to continue with us as guides on this journey.