“Just tape it up for me, ok?”: Masculinities, injury and embodied emotion

Abstract

In this autoethnography, I consider the emotionality of sustaining and exacerbating an athletic injury. I interrogate youth sport experiences in which coaches and teammates lauded my willingness to play sport with little regard for my physical well-being, and the anxieties, doubts, and frustrations I experienced through the process of 'recovering' from my injury. In the process, I forefront my (athletic) identity, and the embodied emotionality of confronting a 'failing' body upon which it rest(s/ed). Additionally, I critically interrogate violence as a thread running through practices and discourses of masculinity, situating my researching body at the "intersecting vectors of power, knowledge and identity" (Giardina and Newman, 2011a: 524).

No emotion is an island: an overview of theoretical perspectives and narrative research on emotions in sport and physical activity

“…She couldn't change what had happened and was disappointed that she let her body get the best of her' (p. 506). Additional work examining emotions surrounding injuries in sport was presented by Laurendeau (2014), who used autoethnographic narratives to explore the construction of the self through an articulation of injury experiences, masculinity, and somatic emotional experiences in sport. In this work, Laurendeau conveys emotions arising from one's (fractured) relationship with the injured body, and he explores how these emotions are produced through social interactions and are constructed within discourses of masculinity: 'Out of nowhere, the 'new guy' hammers me.…”

Enduring or Stubbornness? What It Takes to Be a “Runner” With Physical Limitations

“…There are numerous scholars who consider autoethnography “self-indulgent” (Sparkes, 2002) or “self-conscious navel gazing” (Rinehart, 1998); however, many researchers (e.g., Bochner, Ellis, Frank, Lincoln) argue that autoethnographic writing allows the author to think and feel with the story being told rather than about it (Frank, 1995). This includes scholars such as Sparkes (1996, 2002) and Laurendeau (2011, 2014), who have written autoethnographies within and about sport and physical education. In the 2013 first edition of the Handbook of Autoethnography , Jones, Adams, and Ellis identify five purposes of conducting autoethnography: (a) disrupting norms of research practice and representation; (b) working from insider knowledge; (c) maneuvering through pain, confusion, anger, and uncertainty and making life better; (d) breaking silence/(re)claiming voice; and (e) making work accessible.…”

The Marathon Journey of My Body-Self and Performing Identity

“…No two stories are the same; despite the association we attempt to make with prior literature. For example, research has been conducted on the performing and changing identities of performers that retire (Martin, Fogarty, & Albion, 2014;Stier, J., 2007), sustain an injury (Laurendeau, 2013;Smith & Sparkes, 2004Sparkes & Smith, 2002, 2003, 2011Tasiemski, et al, 2004), and on able-bodiedness and disability (ChinJu & Brittain, 2006;Groff, D., & Zabrieske, R., 2006;Peers & Eales, in press); which exhibits that this growing body of literature demonstrates the importance of delving deeper into individuals' body-self and performing identities. If we accept Peers' and Eales' (in press) questioning and ultimately their argument as to who is able-bodied, then how do most individuals identify and how does that influence their embodiment?…”

“…At the time, I did not realize that I was adapting and taking responsibility of my body-self and performing identity even though I did not choose this changed and painful body of mine (Frank, 1995). Yet, my feelings and experiences, without consciousness, were blurring the socially constructed ideologies of able-bodiedness and disability (Laurendeau, 2013;Peers & Eales, in press), from an able athletic body-self and sporting body perspective. How, then, do I identify my body-self in the gray, social space I occupy in this pained body?…”