Living through, living with and living on from breast cancer in the UK: creative cathartic methodologies, cancerous spaces and a politics of compassion

Clare Madge

doi:10.1080/14649365.2014.990498

Abstract

This paper contributes to a growing literature exploring the embodied emotions involved in death studies. It does so through a creative cathartic autobiographical account of living through and on from breast cancer. In presenting this ‘storifying experience’, this UK-based paper has three key aims: first, it attempts to counter the disjuncture between the fleshy and emotional cancer journey I have travelled through and the sometimes abstract, disembodied accounts of cancer circulating in some geographical texts; second, it reveals some geographical insights that are uncovered through the use of creative cathartic methodologies which unsettle commonly held discourses about dying and surviving; and third, it poses some troubling questions for geographers working in this field with respect to the methodologies, politics and emotions of such research. In the paper, I argue that employing a creative cathartic methodology gestures towards ‘an opening into learning’ that provokes emotional enquiries about what it means to be taught by the experience of (traumatised) others. In particular, I advocate for a politicised compassion that both cares for those who are living through, with or living on from life-threatening illnesses and also cares about the complex conditions that shape their experiences, both within and beyond the academy.

Highlights

Autobiography and creativity Geographies of death and dying: living through, living with and living on Studies of death, dying, bereavement and mourning are rapidly becoming a vibrant arena of geographical enquiry
Work has revolved around uncovering the various deathscapes of dying and bereavement (Evans 2014; Glover and Parry 2009; Maddrell and Sidaway 2010; Morris and Thomas 2005), exploring landscapes, sites and cultures of remembrance and mourning (Gin 2013; Jenkings et al 2012; Maddrell 2013) and revealing death work, dead body politics and corpse geographies (Tyner 2014; Young and Light 2013)
This paper attempts to add to this scholarship on the emotive angle of geographies of death and dying, by presenting an unsettling autobiographical narrative of living through and on from the serious life-threatening illnessii

Summary

Introduction

Autobiography and creativity Geographies of death and dying: living through, living with and living on Studies of death, dying, bereavement and mourning are rapidly becoming a vibrant arena of geographical enquiry.

Results

Conclusion