Chronic Pain Performance and Knowledge: Toward a Process With Ecological Pain

Abstract

I have lived with chronic back pain for over 20 years. My experience has shown me that my relationship to pain can resonate with what it means to relate with wider ecological pain. I reflect on Pain and I—my autobiographical dance performance that explores the rich complexities of chronic pain and asks “what can pain teach us”? I explore what chronic pain experience can reveal about having a process with pain and staying “with the trouble” of our “wounded Earth.” I draw on autoethnographic poetry, performance text, pain theory, and ecological philosophy.