The project examines how cancer is narrativized in contemporary culture. It analyses how counter-narratives in narrative fiction and life-writing challenge dominant cancer narratives. It develops a new form of bibliotherapy that aims at amplifying narrative agency – the ability to navigate narrative environments in critical and creative ways. We reconceptualize cancer in terms of illness as ability that allows confronting the randomness and connectedness of life. The data consists of literary fiction, life-writing, media texts and texts produced in bibliotherapeutic groups in two hospitals (HUS, TYKS). Under the auspices of the SELMA centre, we develop a new qualitative method, narrative agency analysis, that opens a new line of research in narrative medicine, medical humanities and narrative studies. The project enhances public awareness of different ways of narrating cancer and participates in creating more capacious cancer imaginaries that open up new possibilities of agency.

2023

2028