Listening to what cannot be said: Broken narratives and the lived body

Abstract

The core of this special issue of Arts and Humanities in Higher Education emerged from the Broken Narratives and the Lived Body conference held in 2016. The ‘Broken Narrative’ essays included in this issue open up a critical space for understanding and theorising illness narratives that defy a conventional cognitive ordering of the self as a bounded spatial and temporal entity. Here, we discuss how narratives might be ‘broken’ by discourse, trauma, ‘ill’ lived bodies and experiences that exceed linguistic representation. We trouble distinctions between coherent and incoherent narratives, attending to what gaps, silences and ‘nonsenses’ can convey about embodied illness experiences. Ultimately, we suggest that ‘breaks’ are in fact a continuation of embodied narration. This is shown in the ‘Art and Trauma’ forum of essays, which reveal how narrative silences can ‘infect’ other embodied subjects and be transformed, achieving musical or visual representation that allow us to apprehend the ‘constitutive outside’ of narratives of illness or trauma.

Supported Decision-Making: The Expectations Held by People With Experience of Mental Illness

“…Our analysis builds on empirical and theoretical studies of illness narratives, which study the ill self at moments of interaction (Bury, 1982, 2001; Carel, 2008; Charmaz, 1983; Estroff, Lachicotte, Illingworth, & Johnston, 1991; Hydén & Brockmeier, 2008; Kokanović & Stone, 2018). In illness studies, an understanding of the self emerges through the lens of the illness (Carel, 2008).…”

“…We also took into account other aspects of these encounters, such as expectations of care, family practices of support, and how people’s support needs changed over time. Theoretically, we were interested in the relational nature of SDM—participants’ relations with others and with themselves, and drew on a rich history of literature and research in the field of narrative and phenomenological research of illness experience (Andrews et al, 2013; Carel, 2008; Frank, 2012; Hydén & Brockmeier, 2008; Kokanović & Stone, 2018). Narrative positioning analysis was used to explore how people located themselves within their accounts.…”

Elements of a counter‐exhibition: Excavating and countering a Canadian history and legacy of eugenics

“…Such decentering through counter‐stories disrupts the consensus created by master narratives by suggesting other ways of being (Boivin, 2015). Drawing from disability studies scholars who are re‐thinking narrative to include nonlinguistic and affective forms of storytelling, as a way to reimagine what it means to be human (Douglas et al, 2020; Kokanović & Stone, 2018), ITL enacted stories in multisensory, affective, text/nontext, nonlinear, and multimedia ways. At times, ITL intentionally chose not to depend on text‐based methods (such as information panels) to explain, or express, ideas and experience.…”

Subjectivity and illness narratives

“…A wide range of papers presented at the conference explored themes of embodied experiences of psychiatric diagnoses, neurological illnesses and cognitive ''impairments''; persons who are neurodiverse (for example, people living with autism); psychological traumas; and life-threatening illnesses by paying attention to how illness stories are told and performed-as ''situated practices'' (Kokanović and Stone 2017). The conference and the essays in this special issue provide a critical space for understanding and theorising illness narratives bringing together scholars from across the social sciences, medicine, allied health and humanities.…”