Over at Hypatia Reviews Online, Christine Wieseler (U-Texas McGovern Center for Humanities & Ethics) has given a concise and useful review of a new book in philosophy of medicine. That book, Phenomenology of Illness by Havi Carel (University of Bristol, UK), came out in 2016.
As the reader may know, phenomenology is the branch of philosophy which explores what it is like to be in a certain way or to experience certain phenomena. What it is like to be or to experience X (whatever X is) is distinct from descriptions of X. Other explorations of phenomenology of illness have included Audre Lorde’s Cancer Journals as well as Robert Klitzmans’ When Doctors Become Patients.
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Wieseler closes the review with praise:
Most portrayals of illness and impairment in the media take the form of tragic or heroic narratives rather than capturing everyday experiences of illness and impairment (Clare 1999; Wendell 2008; Kafer 2013). Carel accomplishes quite the feat in sharing both the difficulties and losses associated with chronic illness as well as the positive aspects, which are usually overshadowed in our thinking about illness. She neither evokes pity nor suggests that she has triumphed over her condition. Her narrative is one of living with a significant chronic illness rather than a tragic or heroic narrative.
This book, and Wieseler’s review of it, may be of interest to IJFAB Blog readers.
