Merry-Go-Sorry : an autoethnography of chronic illness : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand

Abstract

Merry-Go-Sorry is an autoethnography of chronic illness. It seeks to embrace the depth and complexity of the lived experience of pain and fatigue as they move through the quotidian frustrations, joys, and challenges, as set against the social narratives which seek to fix, cure, pity, judge and quantify chronically ill bodies.

This research is situated within the evocative style of autoethnography, which seeks to connect with the reader at both an intellectual and emotional level. To this aim, Merry-Go-Sorry uses creative non-fiction and visual arts techniques to enrich the narratives, including layered narratives, a braided essay, poetry fragments and figurative self-portraits.

Methodological innovations are made by theorising the autoethnographic self as a textual character to support authorial reflexivity, and writing the personal story as an autoethnographic metasynthesis to illustrate how this methodology may talk with and to other texts. On a theoretical level, embodied pain is conceived as a non-linear wave like experience, and chronic fatigue as a form of amoral desire. Autoethnographic slippage in these stories are modified by the presentation of figurative portraits as an ethical and evocative way to evoke “thick performance”.

Contributions to knowledge in this area include the addition of lived experience to the brachial neuritis literature, in understanding “embodied time” as important in pain, the cultural burden of shame in fatigue. Taken as a whole, this research broadens the understanding of chronic illness as a disruptive and disrupting experience, but one that does not equate an unwell body with a body that is in any way less whole.