The Clinic & The Person
The Clinic & The Person is a podcast bringing knowledge and perspectives from the humanities to certain aspects of biomedicine. “The Clinic” represents all that biomedicine brings to bear on diseases and treatments, and “The Person” represents all that people go through with health problems. Our episodes draw from works in the humanities—any genre—directly related to how people are affected by specific clinical events such as migraine headaches, epileptic seizures, and dementia, and by specific health care situations such as restricted access to care and gut-wrenching, life and death choices. We analyze and interpret featured works and provide thoughts on their applications in patient care; health professions education; clinical and population research; health care policy; and social and cultural trends and preoccupations. Often joining us are the creators of works we feature or experts on the topics we select.
The Clinic & The Person
I’m Sick, Therefore I Am: Illness as Normality in Nervous System with Author Lina Meruane
Susan Sontag has said, “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.” Author Lina Meruane challenges the idea that people with illnesses are necessarily separated into a different kingdom than those who are not sick, asserting instead that illness can be part of anyone’s normality. She makes this case through her novel, Nervous System. The novel tells the stories of four family members and a boyfriend who, at one time or another, develop a serious illness or help take care of one of the others with a serious illness: it’s all illness, it’s all the time, it’s normal. We talk with Dr. Meruane about her idea of illness as normality as she presented it in the novel, and about how its atypical structure and its evocative and memorable prose contribute to the stories told and the ideas offered.
Source
Nervous System by Lina Meruane, translated by Meghan McDowell, Graywolf Press, 2021.
Links
- Lina Meruane’s bio
- Russell Teagarden’s blog piece about the novel, Nervous System, and his blog piece about the MRI scene in the novel.
- Russell Teagarden’s blog piece about Lina Meruane’s novel, Seeing Red.
- Video conversation between Lina Meruane and Meghan McDowell about Nervous System.
- Interview with Lina Meruane in LALT magazine about Nervous System.
A big thanks to Lina Meruane for sharing her thoughts on illness as normality and her writing processes.
Our next episode will draw from the journalist Michael Pollan’s books investigating the prospects for psychedelics in the management of various mental health problems, or even to make individuals and communities better than well.
Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to this text link, or email to: russell.teagarden@theclinicandtheperson.com.
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