Affect and its Circulation in and Beyond Richard Selzer's “Imelda”

Abstract

Appreciation and literary representation of affective responses in medical encounters help resist the reductionist temptation to quantify and simplify illness experience with test data, images, and medical jargon. Then how do these representations of affect make a difference in the medical profession? Surgeon writer Richard Selzer's short story “Imelda” (1982) might offer a unique perspective to examine physicians' affective engagements with illness experience and illuminate how literature works through the representation of affect in medical contexts. In light of Sarah Ahmed's ideas of circulation in affective economies and the forming of affective communities, I read Imelda's deformity and the narrative as two affect objects which trigger the circulation of affect and the formation of a transformative network of affect among all those who are involved in the dramatic event of a post mortem operation. I argue that the emergence of affect in medical encounters energizes literary representation, while literature captures affect with language, and animates affective circulation in and beyond the narrative. More importantly, affective circulation occasioned by physician writing brings in new possibilities to humanize medicine.