Background
A cancer diagnosis can be experienced as a rupture, affecting all areas of one’s identity, including physical, temporal, psychosocial, sexual and relational. Many patients feel a sense of involuntary surrender when they start treatment, and silencing, stigma and shame still abound, from medical teams, families and society more broadly. The impact on sexuality is a post-cancer burden which is often felt to be the most distressing, and which remains a taboo subject for healthcare professionals.
Aim
In this presentation, I share my research, which investigates the remaking of the self after cancer, using arts-based methods underpinned by a feminist ethics of collective care. As well as reflecting on the implications for building capability in survivorship research, I also describe the complexities of navigating my own researcher subject position, as someone who has survived cancer twice.
Methods
My theoretical reflections on positionality and my commitment to honouring difference and lived experience have methodological implications, which I both embrace and mitigate against. Through a series of creative workshops, co-facilitated by an artist and a somatic sexologist, my participants created collaged bodymaps, which then facilitated individual and group research conversations.
Conclusion
My visuo-textual analysis of my participants’ artworks and research conversations has yielded useful insights for both the clinic and social models of survivorship. Through the process of creating their bodymaps, participants were thinking through the body, accessing their erotic as power, renegotiating their relationship with embodiment and pleasure. The use of creative research methods facilitated a depth of data acquisition and specificity of lived experience, including candid descriptions of the impact of cancer on sexuality. Conclusions include the shortcomings of current clinical practice and recommendations for personalised survivorship pathways of care.