Abstract

This dissertation examines six illness narratives made by artists diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses. These six case studies explore how artists use aesthetic form to reconstruct their body/self wounded by medical treatments, and to reconstruct their identity thrown into crisis by the psychological, social, and physical effects of illness. Aesthetics involves the imagination and critical thought to actively re-order, transform, contest, and interpret everyday life in order to re-story the self in accordance with the changes brought about by illness and medical care. ;This study deals with the idea of narrative as a reconstructive process, as embodied in various media through writing, photography and improvised performance. The specific aesthetic illness narratives examined are: a letter by Francis Burney written in 1812 after her mastectomy, Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals and her journal Burst of Light , Jo Spence's documentary photographs taken in the hospital and her subsequent phototherapy work done in the late 1980s, Hannah Wilke's photographs of her mother's breast cancer in the late 1970s, and of herself with lymphoma in the 1990s, Anna Halprin's dance/theater workshop and the performance she developed with the HIV-positive workshop participants called Carry Me Home , the Survival workshops lead by Bill T. Jones during 1992-1994, and Still/Here choreographed by Jones based on materials that arose during the Survival Workshops and performed by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1994/1995. ;My analysis of these illness narratives uses performance as a critical frame to investigate links between the social and institutional practices of everyday life, making an art of everyday, and the embodied experiences of people who are ill. To make these links, I draw on medical anthropology, sociology, and psychoanalytic, feminist, performance and art theories. My study explicates the role of the arts in making therapeutic interventions, in shaping a critical perspective, and in creating sociopolitical praxis. My dissertation contributes to understanding how aesthetic illness narratives communicate the sentient experience of illness, while providing a critical/interpretive framework for analyzing cultural performances and works of art