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This thesis is autobiographical in nature and follows my life experiences relating to the development and subsequent removal of a large epidermoid brain tumour. The resultant impairment of my faculties, and its effect on my vocational, emotional and spiritual life is outlined. My main means of expressing my journey from illness to partial recovery and self-renewal is through art-making. This art-making (a form of art self-therapy) is recorded in my paintings; included in my thesis as my main means of expression taking the place of the printed word, as my capacity to write and type is somewhat impaired. The main value of my thesis relates to recounting the experience, for others of the renewal of my life, following a major illness. Most brain tumours are fatal or severely limit the ability of a person to communicate, or limit their intellectual functioning. I was fortunate in that I could still communicate through using the visual arts; an area where I had retained my competencies. My thesis then, is aimed at increasing the understanding of illness, recovery and renewal for those in the helping and medical professions; also to give hope of life renewal through art expression and art therapy in cases where verbal and written means of communication are limited. The field of my thesis is adult education and personal learning through experience. This learning has focussed on using creative painting experiences as a way of self-healing. Those paintings that were significant in my recovery and renewal are exhibited in the Art Gallery section of this thesis. By viewing these artworks, you can share in, and understand my journey through illness, recovery and renewal through art-making, self-therapy.

När människor drabbas av en traumatisk kris som raserar deras vardag tvingas de till att försöka bygga upp sin tillvaro igen. Vissa gör detta genom att blogga om sina tankar och känslor rörande krisen. Vad kommer det sig att så många väljer att visa upp sitt lidande i ett offentligt forum? Med hjälp av grundad teori undersöker vi de mest centrala aspekterna av och omkring krisbloggande för att skapa en större förståelse för detta nutida fenomen. Genom intervjuer och studier av bloggar framkommer det att personer som bloggar får möjlighet att på egna villkor göra sin röst hörd, sprida sin berättelse och reflektera över sin egen resa. Detta, samt det stöd som de får genom återkoppling från läsarna, gör att de upplever ett ökat välmående. Med hjälp av utvalda delar från Giddens teori om det senmoderna samhället placerar vi fenomenet krisbloggar i en nutida kontext och genom Franks teorier om narrativ förklarar vi hur viktigt det är att få skapa och dela sin berättelse för människor som drabbats av någon form av kris. / When people suffer from a traumatic crisis that destroys their lives, they are forced to try and rebuild their everyday lives again. Some do this by writing blogs about their thoughts and feelings regarding the crisis. Why is it that so many people choose to display their suffering in a public forum? With the help of grounded theory, we investigate the most central aspects of blogging about traumatic crises in order to create a greater understanding of this contemporary phenomenon. Through interviews and the study of blogs, it is revealed that the people behind the blogs are able to make their voices heard on their own terms, to spread their story and to reflect on their own journey. This, alongside the support they recieve through the feedback from their readers, make them experience increased well-being. With the help of selected parts from Giddens' theory on modernity, we place the phenomenon of cirisis blogs in a comtemporary context and through Frank's theories regarding narratives, we explain how important it is to create and share stories for people affected by some form of crisis.

This thesis proposes a critical study of the techniques and motives behind modern commodity feminist advertising, focusing on the appropriation of the “young girl” as a symbol of the feminist cause. This evolving trend in advertising, building upon new movements of empowerment and the recent proliferation of the online feminist space, is shifting the logics of consumption by marketing feminist ideology and activism through consumer purchasing power. By prompting consumers to believe that their purchases can make a significant change, companies are developing brand loyalty in their key marketing demographics by using the image and rhetoric of the “young girl” to tap into a term I call “anti-nostalgia,” a nostalgia whereby women leverage the inherent sentimentality of childhood with a constructive understanding and rejection of the destructively sexist climate they experienced to combat these sociocultural conditions for future generations. Joining theoretical research on branding, user-generated content, and the neoliberal ideology of the consumer-citizen, I argue that these advertising campaigns, coupled with online spaces for public interaction and participation, effectively create channels for their target consumers to contribute to this commodified form of activism. In reality, however, these “feminist” purchases are simply forms of consumer self-therapy in a modern political climate of systemic gender discrimination.