”Den här kroppen som lämnat mig i sticket”

Abstract

”This body that has forsaken me.” Breast cancer, bodies, and recovery in Kristina Sandberg’s "En ensam plats" and Yvonne Hirdman’s "Behandlingen" This article studies autobiographical accounts of breast cancer, so called pathographies, analysing how the body and the illness are portrayed. The article has a special focus on the experiences of the lived body, relating it to the psychological concept resilience as well as to the sense of estrangement of the body in illness and the socially situated body. The focus of the study is two autobiographical Swedish accounts of breast cancer: Kristina Sandbergs’ En ensam plats (‘A lonely place’, 2021) and Yvonne Hirdman’s Behandlingen. 205 dagar i kräftrike (‘The treatment. 205 days in the kingdom of cancer’, 2019). The article is located in the field of medical humanities and the authors aim to bring out aspects relevant to both the literary understanding of pathographies and the medical understanding of individual experiences of illness.

Keywords

• Illness
• illness narrative
• breast cancer
• cancer narrative
• pathography
• medical humanities