Rhetorics of the Visual: Graphic Medicine, Comics and its Affordances

Venkatesan, Sathyaraj; Saji, Sweetha

doi:10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.23

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…1 More broadly, graphic medicine refers to "the intersection of the medium of comics and the discourse of health care" (Czerwiec et al 2015, 1). Although these narratives are predominately autobiographical, they also address, to paraphrase Venkatesan and Saji (2016), various sociocultural issues, such as medical negligence, the vexed doctor-patient relationship, the industrialization of health care, patient identity, the role of insurance providers, the challenges of caretaking, and the demands of being a doctor in a commercialized health-care sector.…”

Section: Graphic Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

Comics in the Time of a Pan(dem)ic: COVID-19, Graphic Medicine, and Metaphors

Saji¹,

Venkatesan²,

Callender³

2021

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

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Comics have always responded to pandemics/catastrophes, documenting the way we deal with such crises. Recently, graphic medicine, an interdisciplinary field of comics and medicine, has been curating comics, editorial cartoons, autobiographical cartoons, and social media posts under the heading "COVID-19 Comics" on their websites. These collected comics express what we propose to call covidity, a neologism that captures both individual and collective philosophical, material, and wide-ranging emotional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Treating such comics as the source material and drawing insights from theorists Ian Williams, Alan Bleakley, Susan Sontag, and others, this article examines graphic medicine's representation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The conceptual metaphors of war, anthropomorphism, and superheroism are used to represent and illustrate the lived experience of the pandemic, and the article investigates metaphor types, their utility, and motivational triggers for such representations. In doing so, the essay situates graphic medicine as a productive site that presents the pandemic's multifarious impact.

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Section: Graphic Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

Comics in the Time of a Pan(dem)ic: COVID-19, Graphic Medicine, and Metaphors

Saji¹,

Venkatesan²,

Callender³

2021

Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

Self Cite

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“…Comics have the ability to articulate aspects of social experience that we collectively experience. They are expressive tools that enable readers to understand the complexities of illness (Kasthuri & Venkatesan, 2015;Venkatesan & Saji, 2016) and could be suitable solutions to the problem.…”

Section: Organ and Body Donation Information Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Comics written for adults are a popular and engaging way of transferring health information as they are able to recruit readers from outside the usual comic demographic (Williams, 2012), and have the ability to remove complex vocabulary and replace it with images that are easier to understand (de Rothewelle, 2019). Comics employ methods of visual storytelling that are more successful than the use of images and text alone, with studies showing that combining pictures and text in comic format increases understanding (Venkatesan & Saji, 2016).…”

Section: Graphic Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the most part graphic medicine comics integrate subjective perceptions with objective truths that are often focussed around personalised iconographies (Kasthuri & Venkatesan, 2015), and these attributes makes comics a highly communicative and ideal medium to represent shared experiences (Venkatesan & Saji, 2016). There is potential value in a resource that not only informs but initiates discussions and decision making between people about donation.…”

Section: Graphic Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

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‘To donate or not to donate? that is the question!’: an organ and body donation comic

Irwin

Roughley

Smith

2020

Journal of Visual Communication in Medicine

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Conversations surrounding end of life and death can be difficult or taboo for some, meaning that matters of organ and body donation are not widely discussed. To Donate or Not to Donate? That is the Question! is a comic developed to raise awareness and challenge common misconceptions about donation by encouraging the publics to engage in informed discussions about the different options available. This case study proposes graphic medicine as an alternative method of presenting donation information to a public audience, and illustrates how the comic medium can communicate body donation information in an accessible and engaging way.

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“…Although several text-based illness narratives document the private psychosomatic sufferings of patients and caregivers, as we have written elsewhere, "the structural singularity and formal affordances of the comics medium" that extend into "the subjective realities of sufferers" make graphic medicine unique. 2 In reading graphic pathographies, we have been intrigued by several passing references to the impact of biostatistical data on patients. For instance, in Emily Steinberg's 2014 webcomic on her medical experience of infertility, Broken Eggs, 3 the physicians guarantee the success rate of an infertility clinical trial and coerce her to undergo treatment, promising her that "it worked 70% of the time."…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Graphic Medicine and the Limits of Biostatistics

Venkatesan¹,

Saji

2018

AMA Journal of Ethics

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Increasing reliance on statistics for treatment and clinical risk assessment not only leads to the reductive interpretation of disease but also obscures ambiguities, distrust, and profound emotions that are important parts of a patient's lived experience of illness and that should be regarded as clinically and ethically relevant. Enabling critique of the limitations of statistics and illustrating their hegemonic impact on the patient's experience of illness, graphic medicine emerges as a democratic platform where marginalized perspectives on illness experiences are vindicated. Through a close reading of two carer narratives, Mom's Cancer (2006) and Janet & Me: An Illustrated Story of Love and Loss (2004), we illustrate how graphic pathographies represent experiential features of illness that are obscured by overreliance on statistical data. Statistics in Clinics and Comics"Your survival rate is 10%!" the oncologist pronounced after a quick glance at the pathology report of our friend. Although the physician was objectively stating our friend's chances of survival, it had a paralyzing impact on us. Five years has passed since his diagnosis of lung cancer; today, our friend is a successful entrepreneur and a motivational speaker inspiring thousands of cancer patients with his survival saga. In retrospect, the physician's statistical assertion inspired dread in him and all those who were close to him each day. Today, we are relieved that reality was far different from those figures. It was during this span of 5 years of uncertainty that we came across a website called graphicmedicine.org as well as numerous other online sources about illness and survival. The website featured several comics that boldly explored those aspects of illness and health care that physicians and the medical system at large don't convey to patients.The increasing reliance on and ritualistic use of medical statistics for treatment, risk assessment, and other related purposes not only leads to the reductive interpretation of disease but also obscures the ambiguities, distrust, fear, and profound emotions that are important aspects of a patient's lived experience of illness. In Illness as Narrative, Ann Jurecic characterizes such a chasm as "a fundamental incompatibility" 1 between personal experience of illness and statistically mediated measurement. Through critiquing and

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Rhetorics of the Visual: Graphic Medicine, Comics and its Affordances

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

Comics in the Time of a Pan(dem)ic: COVID-19, Graphic Medicine, and Metaphors

Comics in the Time of a Pan(dem)ic: COVID-19, Graphic Medicine, and Metaphors

‘To donate or not to donate? that is the question!’: an organ and body donation comic

Graphic Medicine and the Limits of Biostatistics

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