Illness Stories: Self-affirming Creativity and the Subject in Crisis

This paper examines aesthetic configurations of pathography by focusing on the first-person illness documentary Unrest, directed by Jennifer Brea, and Elizabeth Trembley’s graphic memoir of trauma Look Again: A Memoir. In these case studies what is of interest is not the illness as such, but rather the way in which the subject in crisis transcends its illness through the creative process. The thesis of this paper is that such forms of pathography allow storytellers and their recipient to share pain, dysfunction, confusion, and isolation in order to shape a wider community.