Abstract

In this study of the movement of private pain into public spaces, I have analysed the interests that inform pain discourse and have investigated and documented understandings of pain and how the telling of it has been received. Pain is felt within the confines of the body. In the process of making sense of pain stories I both walked with people in pain to document first hand accounts and inserted textual analyses of pain mediations. This study of recovery culture is informed by historical and current self-help literature. This enabled me to understand ways pain has been constructed in public discourse. One site of this analysis is the recent debates of child sexual abuse. Another is the development of the autopathography investigated here as a regularity and a way of reinhabiting the space of pain in public discourse. This thesis proposes expanding public spaces for pain through juxtaposed categories, developed out of my research and experiments in the visual arts.