{"id":1867,"date":"2018-01-08T11:59:56","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T11:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/?p=1867"},"modified":"2018-02-03T07:56:09","modified_gmt":"2018-02-03T07:56:09","slug":"before-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/2018\/01\/08\/before-narrative\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Before Narrative: Episodic Reading and Representations of Chronic Pain&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first publication of the <em>Translating Chronic Pain<\/em> project is now available.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mh.bmj.com\/content\/early\/2018\/01\/04\/medhum-2017-011223\">Sara Wasson, \u2018Before Narrative: Episodic Reading and Representations of Chronic Pain\u2019, <em>Medical Humanities <\/em>43 (5 January 2018): 1-7.<\/a><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-size: 12pt\">Abstract<\/span><\/h2>\n<p id=\"p-2\">This article suggests that some illness experience may require a reading practice less concerned with narrative coherence or self-authorship, and more interested in the value of textual fragments, episodes and moments considered outside a narrative framework. Chronic pain can pose multiple challenges to the narrative orientations celebrated in both \u2018survivorship\u2019 discourse and classic medical humanities scholarship. In its recalcitrance to cure, its often mysterious aetiology and its complex blend of somatic, interpersonal and affective elements, representations of chronic pain can require a richer vocabulary of temporality. I draw on contemporary affect theory to augment the available critical vocabulary for the textual representation of protagonists\u2019 temporal orientation within illness experience, identifying a language for the emergent present that resists a narrative form. Beyond identifying narrative \u2018incoherence\u2019, affect discourse gives a way to recognise the strained, equivocal\u00a0<em>labour<\/em>\u00a0of incoherence, of inhabiting a cryptic present moment. Affect theory\u2019s attention to the emergent present may give a way to read incoherent \u2018chaos\u2019 outside from a narrative framework, not only as a dark, formless stage in a personal story. To expand our vocabulary for this position, I offer a term for a particular affective experience of the present amid repeated marginalisation: the temporality of thwarted connection. I illustrate how these concepts can enable an alternative reading stance by offering a brief analysis of Lous Heshusius\u2019s hybrid autobiography and academic study,\u00a0<em>Chronic Pain from the Inside Out<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first publication of the Translating Chronic Pain project is now available. Sara Wasson, \u2018Before Narrative: Episodic Reading and Representations of Chronic Pain\u2019, Medical Humanities 43 (5 January 2018): 1-7. Abstract This article suggests that some illness experience may require a reading practice less concerned with narrative coherence or self-authorship, and more interested in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":619,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8bHTD-u7","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/619"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1867"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1873,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867\/revisions\/1873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/translatingpain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}