Illness Trauma, Life-Writing, and Pandemic Storytelling

Hanna Meretoja

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Chapter 3 Illness Trauma, Life-Writing, and Pandemic Storytelling

In: Pandemic Storytelling

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Hanna Meretoja

Hanna Meretoja
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 57–82

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004716681_005

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This chapter explores pandemic storytelling in relation to the author’s personal illness trauma linked to her breast cancer diagnosis. It discusses problems in the cultural narrative that has dominated the framing of both cancer and the COVID-19 pandemic – the narrative of battle and war – and discusses ways of contesting the dominant narrative. Meretoja analyzes the dominant mode of narrativizing the pandemic in relation to her own way of engaging in pandemic storytelling through creative writing, which resulted in the publication of her novel Elotulet (The Night of Ancient Lights, 2022). The novel deals with the interconnections between cancer and the pandemic, and it examines illness as a trauma that is difficult to locate in time and space as it does not concern a specific event but rather the possibility of a lost future. The chapter first briefly articulates how narrative hermeneutics approaches narratives as culturally mediated interpretative practices shaped by the dynamics of master and counter narratives, and discusses how cultural narratives can function as models of sense-making that underlie specific narrative discourse. The chapter then problematizes normative narratives of illness and analyzes ways of practicing narrative agency in the process of writing about serious illness in pandemic times. The chapter discusses how Meretoja’s novel deals with and gives expression to the three aspects of narrative agency: narrative awareness, narrative imagination, and narrative dialogicality. It highlights the need to move away from the neo-liberal idea of atomistic individuals fully in charge of their lives towards acknowledging our shared vulnerability and interdependency. The chapter addresses the need for narrative imaginaries that might help us accept that we are all destructible embodied beings. It suggests that life-writing can be an act of resistance, connection, and hope – particularly insofar as it holds open collective possibilities linked to laying bare our vulnerability, sharing it with others, and envisioning a more sustainable future.

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Pandemic Storytelling

Series: Narratives and Mental Health, Volume: 3

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004716681

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 18 Dec 2024

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies

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Chapter 3 Illness Trauma, Life-Writing, and Pandemic Storytelling

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Pandemic Storytelling

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