McNeilly, Sarah

Is trauma representation possible without re-traumatization (of self or other)? Developed through the creation, performance, and critical analysis of Titty Cakes: A Recipe for Radical Acceptance—an autobiographical, ritual-performance rooted in lived experiences of breast cancer and gang rape—this thesis argues that trauma representation is (im)possible: possible only by accepting its impossibility. To navigate this paradox, I propose the ethics and aesthetics of absence: a performance theory that resists "trauma porn" by refusing direct representation in favour of rupture, remains, and ritual. Absence is neither void nor lack; it is an ethical imperative and aesthetic strategy through which trauma is held rather than exposed, allowing the unspeakable to be witnessed. Ritual becomes the vessel for this holding: it activates affect without spectacle, invites witness without voyeurism, and fosters communitas without demanding closure. Titty Cakes stages absence as presence; where the scar, not the wound, becomes the locus of meaning.

Author Keywords: Breast Cancer, Performance Studies, Research-Creation, Saint Agatha of Sicily, Sexual Violence, Trauma Studies