Illness as Many Narratives: Arts, Medicine and Culture - Hardcover

Illness as Many Narratives is a thorough and thought-provoking analysis of the multiple ways people have tried to shape their own and others' stories, and so find meaning in the overwhelming turmoil of illness. From the medical perspective, this book acts as a springboard for a deeper understanding of the patient experience of illness, and allows reflection on the way we as clinicians encounter and interpret the illness narratives of our own patients - in both personal and medical education contexts. -- Dr Sophie Fitzsimmons, Centre for Medical Humanities There could be no stronger sign of the coming of age of the critical medical humanities than Stella Bolaki's Illness As Many Narratives. A piece of artistry as deft, intricate, and steadfastly complex as the astonishingly diverse range of artworks presented within it, Illness as Many Narratives is rich scholarship in keeping with the new wave of creative explorations in care, in pedagogy, and in health and illness, a book at last adequate to their demands. -- Dr Claire Hooker, University of Sydney and Dr Scott Fitzpatrick, University of Newcastle, Australia In this book's examples, we can see what we already know but often ignore: that no patient's illness experience happens in a vacuum, or, perhaps even more importantly, within a medical bubble. The artistic forms are of great importance because they are related to questions of ethics and politics that explore the many -metastasised- conflicts around illness. Stella Bolaki presents the patient (perhaps for some uncomfortably so) as a complex, lively, and creative being. She convincingly works out what her -emergent narratives- can do better than other word-based narratives: they solicit dialogues and shape perceptions in a much more public and political way. -- Birgit Bunzel Linder, BMJ, Medical Humanities Illness as Many Narratives is a thorough and thought-provoking analysis of the multiple ways people have tried to shape their own and others' stories, and so find meaning in the overwhelming turmoil of illness. From the medical perspective, this book acts as a springboard for a deeper understanding of the patient experience of illness, and allows reflection on the way we as clinicians encounter and interpret the illness narratives of our own patients - in both personal and medical education contexts. -- Dr Sophie Fitzsimmons, Centre for Medical Humanities There could be no stronger sign of the coming of age of the critical medical humanities than Stella Bolaki's Illness As Many Narratives. A piece of artistry as deft, intricate, and steadfastly complex as the astonishingly diverse range of artworks presented within it, Illness as Many Narratives is rich scholarship in keeping with the new wave of creative explorations in care, in pedagogy, and in health and illness, a book at last adequate to their demands. -- Dr Claire Hooker, University of Sydney and Dr Scott Fitzpatrick, University of Newcastle, Australia

Illness narratives have become a cultural phenomenon in the Western world but in what ways can they be seen to have aesthetic, ethical and political value? What do they reveal about experiences of illness, the relationship between the body and identity and the role of the arts in bearing witness to illness for people who are ill and those connected to them? How can they influence medicine, the arts and shape public understandings of health and illness? These questions and more are explored in Illness as Many Narratives, which contains readings of a rich array of representations of illness from the 1980s to the present. A wide range of arts and media are considered such as life writing, photography, performance, film, theatre, artists' books and animation. The individual chapters deploy multidisciplinary critical frameworks and discuss physical and mental illness. Through reading this book you will gain an understanding of the complex contribution illness narratives make to contemporary culture and the emergent field of Critical Medical Humanities.