There are two aims in writing this paper. Firstly, I reflect on several incidents that highlighted for me what it meant to be a widow in the eyes of others. The intention is to bring to light how becoming a widow reinforces how people define you relative to a man, more poignant because that man is absent. Providing personal insights sifted through theory is a form of feminist autoethnography that functions here as an intervention into more common views of widowhood. The second aim is to consider my experience of having the original version of this paper rejected by a journal. The reviewers’ comments made me understand that my execution of feminist autoethnography was seen as problematic. This experience has spurned me to explore the need for methodological risk-taking, particularly when the topic being discussed, in this case widowhood, requires personal resilience to bring out of the shadows. Discussing issues that are “heartfelt” can contribute to debates about the construction of knowledge because they invite consideration of what is taken to be rational and what is taken to be emotional.

中文翻译：

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一位寡妇和一位可疑的民族志作家

写这篇论文有两个目的。首先，我反思了几起事件，这些事件让我明白了寡妇在别人眼中意味着什么。目的是揭示成为寡妇如何强化人们对你相对于男人的定义，因为那个男人的缺席而更加令人心酸。提供通过理论筛选的个人见解是女权主义自我民族志的一种形式，在这里起到了对寡妇更常见观点的干预作用。第二个目的是考虑我的这篇论文的原始版本被期刊拒绝的经历。审稿人的评论让我明白，我对女权主义自我民族志的执行被认为是有问题的。这段经历促使我去探索方法论上冒险的必要性，特别是当所讨论的话题（在本例中是丧偶）需要个人坚韧才能走出阴影时。讨论“发自内心”的问题有助于引发有关知识建构的辩论，因为它们会引发人们思考什么是理性的，什么是感性的。