The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and EthicsIll people are more than victims of disease or patients of medicine; they are wounded storytellers, Frank argues. People tell stories to make sense of their suffering; when they turn their diseases into stories, they find healing. Drawing on the work of authors such as Oliver Sacks, Anatole Broyard, Norman Cousins, and Audre Lorde, as well as on the stories of people he has met during years spent among different illness groups, Frank recounts a stirring collection of illness narratives, ranging from the well-known - Gilda Radner's battle with ovarian cancer - to the private testimonials of people with cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, and disabilities. Their stories are more than accounts of personal suffering: they abound with moral choices and point to a social ethic. Frank identifies three basic narratives of illness - stories of restitution, chaos, and quest. Restitution narratives anticipate getting well and give prominence to the technology of cure. In chaos narratives, illness seems to stretch on forever, with no respite or redeeming insights. Quest narratives are about finding that illness can be transformed into a means for the ill person to become someone new. Understanding these three narrative types helps us to hear the ill, but ultimately illness stories are more. Frank presents these stories as a form of testimony: the ill person is more than a survivor; she is a witness. Schooled in a "pedagogy of suffering", the ill person reaches out to others, offering a truth about living. The truth is a starting point for a "narrative ethics", as private experiences become public voices. Wounded storytellers teach more than a new way to understand illness; they exemplify an emergingethic of postmodern times. |
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The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, Second Edition Arthur W. Frank No preview available - 2013 |
Common terms and phrases
Alsop Anatole Broyard Arthur Kleinman Audre Lorde automythology Bauman become Bodhisattva body-self body's Broyard calls cancer chaos narrative chaos stories chaotic body chap chapter Charon chemotherapy chronic clinical communicative body contingency culture Dan Gottlieb describes desire disciplined body disease dominating body embodied Empathy fear Gilda Radner happen hear hero Hilfiker Holocaust human ideal type ill person illness stories images interruption journey Kleinman language Levinas listening lives Lorde's Mairs memoir memory metaphor mirroring body modernist medicine modernity monadic moral Nancy Nancy Mairs narrative ethics one's pain Parsons's patients Paul Ricoeur pedagogy of suffering physician post-colonial postmodern practice problem professional quest narrative quest stories reclaiming recognize reflects relationship remission society requires responsibility restitution narrative restitution story Sacks Sacks's Schweitzer self-story sense sick role social speak Stewart Alsop tell teller testimony told treatment truth voice Waitzkin witness wounded storyteller writes York Zussman Zygmunt Bauman