Writing bodies, wording illness and countering marginalization: graphic autopathographies as a genre

ABSTRACT

The hegemonic oppression by biomedical discourses and erroneous cultural assumptions of degeneracy doubly marginalise the chronically ill and exclude them from domains of productivity. Personal narratives of lived illness experience help to contest metanarratives of dominant discourses, counter the marginalisation occasioned by social and medical othering of diseased bodies, and act as co-discourses that supplement the understanding of illnesses. In this scenario, graphic autopathographies become performative tools through which the marginalised seeks redressal using verbal, spatial and temporal representations of self, body, and illness. Drawing theoretical insights from Arthur Frank, Carolyn R. Miller, Elisabeth El Refaie, Susan Sontag, and Michel Foucault, the article investigates how the chronically ill seek to overcome biomedical reduction and social exclusion by way of this hybrid narrative genre that helps engender participation and resuscitation of the patient’s voice and agency. For this end, the article examines select graphic memoirs and extends the resulting observations to understand autopathographies in general.

KEYWORDS:

• Graphic medicine
• genre
• marginalisation
• chronic illness
• stigma
• medical gaze
• self

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1.. ‘Autopathography’ is a term coined by Thomas Couser to denote autobiographical narratives concerning the author’s illness or disability. This article uses the term graphic autopathographies to refer to graphic memoirs on illness written by the patient.

2.. DSM or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is a publication by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) which provides standard criteria to classify mental disorders. This medical guide has five editions with the latest version, DSM-5 published in 2013.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amritha R Krishnan

Amritha R Krishnan is a Research Scholar in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. Her research concentrates on Health Humanities and Graphic Medicine.

Smita Jha

Smita Jha is a Professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. She received a PhD from Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad. Her research interests include Indian writing in English, Linguistics, ELT, Gender and Cultural Studies.