Glamorous Healing and ‘Rebellious Hope’: Tracing Grief in Transmedial Cancer Life Writing

This article investigates transmedial autobiographical writing practices by women ill with metastatic cancer. Their multi-platformed and mediated life writing normalises the writing about and commercialising of grief and dying. I draw examples from two popular cancer life writers: Canadian Nalie Agustin and British Dame Deborah James, who inscribed their lives and selves on digital platforms until death. I look for their performances and omissions of what I have named the grief of the dying; a particular form of grieving that impacts those living with incurable illness and a heightened sense of death’s nearness. Examining the limits and possibilities that transmedial life writing affords, I trace the transmutations of hope and healing in the autobiographical construction of metastatic cancer. Inscriptions of selves/lives take place in a transmedial network and are informed by the cultural landscapes of intersecting differences. I propose that a highly public life writing practice addressing illness and dying re-inscribes norms of acceptable ill selves and lives, while at the same time exposing illness cultures to critical examination. For the dying life writers, what I describe may ultimately be a hindrance – an ambivalent space when it comes to grieving.