Re:visit. Humanities & Medicine in Dialogue (Journal)
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Intensivmedizinische Geräuschkulissen in der französischen Gegenwartsliteratur: mehr als nur Alarmsignale? Cécile Guilbert, Maylis de Kerangal und Boris Razon hören hin
Full text linkSituated in the theoretical framework of Sound Studies, the article focuses on the literary representation of critical care soundscapes in three contemporary French novels from three different perspectives. While in Maylis de Kerangal’s The Heart, an omniscient narrator details the stages of a heart transplant in a hyperrealist way, Boris Razon’s Palladium gives voice to the patient, who, apparently reduced to a minimally conscious state and therefore catheterized, ventilated, and unable to articulate, disposes however of a rich and noisy inner space where emerge strident, hallucinatory visions. In Cécile Guilbert’s Réanimation it is finally a relative, the spouse of Blaise placed in artificial coma, who gets a chance to speak and to share her grotesque fascination for her husband transformed into a humanoid robot.
Avoiding a loud, sensationalist approach characterized by drama and the omnipresence of alarming noise, the texts opt for a more decent way to approach this symbolically highly charged location and its various sounds. In fact, as heterotopian ‘other space’ in a Foucauldian sense – a space, centered around the human manipulation of breath and beathing and explored in a first part – the ICU not only breaks with established spatiality and temporality but also with hearing habits. By means of an aesthetics of polyphony, the texts try to transpose – as the second part of the article will show – this unfamiliar soundscape torn between two contradictory tendencies. There are, on the one hand, the sounds attesting the necessary, strategic dispossession of the individual, as for instance, the monotone sound of the lifesaving ventilator, or loud radio music that may be perceived, by the patient unable to act, as noise pollution; butthere are, on the other hand, sounds that try to restitute the single person’s individuality. We can cite, for instance, personal address to patients in a vegetative state or singing songs in order to relieve pain. Such re-individualizing strategies, reintroducing relationality in an emblematic universe of monadic isolation, are able to transform the intensive care unit in a resonant space. Paying attention to the human beings not only behind the machines but also in front of them, the third part explores, then, the soundscape of ‘the other side’ of the illness. For relatives, the mobile phone becomes particularly important in such a context. It is, for instance, via the phone that the parents in The Heart are informed about the grave accident of their son – an information that marks a loud rupture in time dividing it in the day before and the day after. With its never-ending beeps and ringtones, expressing the relative’s vital need to be informed and to rest assured, the phone could even be compared to the machines monitoring the patient as Guilbert states in her novel.Situated in the theoretical framework of Sound Studies, the article focuses on the literary representation of critical care soundscapes in three contemporary French novels from three different perspectives. While in Maylis de Kerangal’s The Heart, an omniscient narrator details the stages of a heart transplant in a hyperrealist way, Boris Razon’s Palladium gives voice to the patient, who, apparently reduced to a minimally conscious state and therefore catheterized, ventilated, and unable to articulate, disposes however of a rich and noisy inner space where emerge strident, hallucinatory visions. In Cécile Guilbert’s Réanimation it is finally a relative, the spouse of Blaise placed in artificial coma, who gets a chance to speak and to share her grotesque fascination for her husband transformed into a humanoid robot.
Avoiding a loud, sensationalist approach characterized by drama and the omnipresence of alarming noise, the texts opt for a more decent way to approach this symbolically highly charged location and its various sounds. In fact, as heterotopian ‘other space’ in a Foucauldian sense – a space, centered around the human manipulation of breath and beathing and explored in a first part – the ICU not only breaks with established spatiality and temporality but also with hearing habits. By means of an aesthetics of polyphony, the texts try to transpose – as the second part of the article will show – this unfamiliar soundscape torn between two contradictory tendencies. There are, on the one hand, the sounds attesting the necessary, strategic dispossession of the individual, as for instance, the monotone sound of the lifesaving ventilator, or loud radio music that may be perceived, by the patient unable to act, as noise pollution; butthere are, on the other hand, sounds that try to restitute the single person’s individuality. We can cite, for instance, personal address to patients in a vegetative state or singing songs in order to relieve pain. Such re-individualizing strategies, reintroducing relationality in an emblematic universe of monadic isolation, are able to transform the intensive care unit in a resonant space. Paying attention to the human beings not only behind the machines but also in front of them, the third part explores, then, the soundscape of ‘the other side’ of the illness. For relatives, the mobile phone becomes particularly important in such a context. It is, for instance, via the phone that the parents in The Heart are informed about the grave accident of their son – an information that marks a loud rupture in time dividing it in the day before and the day after. With its never-ending beeps and ringtones, expressing the relative’s vital need to be informed and to rest assured, the phone could even be compared to the machines monitoring the patient as Guilbert states in her novel
Bericht zur Neugründung des Institute for Medical & Health Humanities and Artistic Research, An-Institut der Hochschule für Künste im Sozialen, Ottersberg (Deutschland)
Full text linkDas Institute for Medical & Health Humanities and Artistic Research (IMHAR) will Ansätze aus den Medical & Health Humanities und der künstlerischen Forschung verbinden, um innovative Perspektiven auf Wahrnehmungsweisen von Gesundheit und Kranksein zu entwickeln und voranzutreiben. Es versteht sich als Raum und Forum für transdisziplinäre Ansätze und Forschungspraktiken. Es initiiert, konzipiert und führt Forschungsprojekte durch, baut projektbezogene Kooperationen auf und arbeitet in multiperspektivischen Teams an der Weiterentwicklung von Forschungs- und Vermittlungsstrategien, die geeignet sind, ihre Forschungsergebnisse über die wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaft hinaus zu kommunizieren. Im Zentrum des Interesses steht dabei die Erforschung von mehr oder minder subtilen, vielgestaltigen Relationen und Dimensionen von Wahrnehmung, Erfahrung, Verkörperung und Gestaltung von Gesundheit und Krankheit und dem Wissen von Medizin und Pflege. IMHAR gestaltet einen Forschungs- und Diskursraum, der offen ist für diverse Perspektiven, für Expertisen aus Kultur- und Geisteswissenschaften, den medizinisch-therapeutischen Disziplinen und Professionen, aus den Künsten und aktivistischen Positionen und Erfahrungsräumen
Report about the new Institute for Medical & Health Humanities and Artistic Research, affiliated institute of the Hochschule für Künste im Sozialen, Ottersberg (Germany)
Full text linkThe Institute for Medical & Health Humanities and Artistic Research (IMHAR) aims to combine approaches from the Medical & Health Humanities and artistic research in order to develop and advance innovative perspectives on ways of perceiving health and illness. It is a space and forum for transdisciplinary approaches and research practices. It initiates, designs, and conducts research projects, builds project-related collaborations and works in multi-perspective teams to further develop research and communication strategies that are suitable for disseminating its research findings beyond the scientific community. At the centre of our interest is the exploration of more or less subtle, multifaceted relations and dimensions of perception, experience, embodiment and shaping of health and illness and the knowledge of medicine and care. The Institute aims to provide a space for research and discourse that is open to diverse perspectives, to expertise from the cultural sciences and humanities, the medical-therapeutic disciplines and professions, from the arts and activist positions and their experiences.The Institute for Medical & Health Humanities and Artistic Research (IMHAR) aims to combine approaches from the Medical & Health Humanities and artistic research in order to develop and advance innovative perspectives on ways of perceiving health and illness. It is a space and forum for transdisciplinary approaches and research practices. It initiates, designs, and conducts research projects, builds project-related collaborations and works in multi-perspective teams to further develop research and communication strategies that are suitable for disseminating its research findings beyond the scientific community. At the centre of our interest is the exploration of more or less subtle, multifaceted relations and dimensions of perception, experience, embodiment and shaping of health and illness and the knowledge of medicine and care. The Institute aims to provide a space for research and discourse that is open to diverse perspectives, to expertise from the cultural sciences and humanities, the medical-therapeutic disciplines and professions, from the arts and activist positions and their experiences
Im Gespräch mit... David Wagner
Full text linkFür die erste Nummer von Re:visit zum Themenschwerpunkt The Noise of Medicine konnten wir mit dem Schriftsteller David Wagner, Autor des (unkonventionellen) Transplanationsromans Leben, in Austausch treten. Das Gespräch führte Julia Pröll.Für die erste Nummer von Re:visit zum Themenschwerpunkt The Noise of Medicine konnten wir mit dem Schriftsteller David Wagner, Autor des (unkonventionellen) Transplanationsromans Leben, in Austausch treten. Das Gespräch führte Julia Pröll
Husten: Laut und Letter
Full text linkThe cultural transformation of coughing as a reflex-driven, hard to control form of human expression has found cultural-historical expression in numerous artistic reflections and has thus created a rich exemplary set of signs for the analysis of trans- and intermedial processes of transition. Coughing can be described, heard, or seen; it shows in voice, scripture, and image. Diagnostically, it is subject to the principle of priming and assigned to the most obvious context of meaning. In narrative media, coughing can also form a soundscape, take on a dramaturgical function in the dispositif of the classical music sector, or serve as the symbolic dimension in Modernity’s narratives of decay. In cases the symptom got metonymically linked to, e.g., tuberculosis or cancer, coughing turned into an intersectional mark of distinction, sensitively encoding narratives across different genres and dispositifs. Finally, it can be assumed that coughing also comes into play in the discourses of socio-political and aesthetic control, as it at the same time subverts mechanisms of control and shows their manner of functioning
Editorial
Full text linkMit Re:visit. Humanities & Medicine in Dialogue geht erstmals im deutschsprachigen Raum eine Zeitschrift online, die, eng verknüpft mit dem Innsbrucker Forschungszentrum Medical Humanities und unterstützt von einem international besetzten wissenschaftlichen Beirat, eine Plattform für einen offenen, inter- bis transdisziplinären Dialog an der Schnittstelle von Medizin und Geistes- bzw. Kulturwissenschaften bilden möchte. Das titelgebende Re:visiting lädt hierbei sowohl zu einer kontinuierlichen kritischen Reflexion medizinisch sowie gesundheitspolitisch relevanter Themen und Begrifflichkeiten aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven ein als auch zu einem Nachdenken über die Rollenerwartungen, die nicht nur an Medizin und Geistes- bzw. Kulturwissenschaften herangetragen werden, sondern auch an das aufstrebende Forschungsfeld der Medical Humanities selbst
Autor*innenstimmen und neurodiverses Erzählen: Tito Rayarshi Mukhopadhyays lautlose Narrationen im Kontext der Medical Humanities
Full text linkBesides the many noises in modern medicine, there have always been various forms of silence – some of them directly related to the doctor-patient-interaction and the absence of oral communication. Narrative medicine’s focus on stories, especially stories of illness and trauma, narrated by the witnesses themselves, blurs the lines between the oral and the written, fact and fiction, and the natural sciences and the humanities. This contribution aims to initiate a discussion about the many variations of ‘storytelling’ within the context of clinical practice, especially those that are void of sound. It explores the written narratives of Tito R. Mukhopadhyay, an author diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder [ASD], and emphasizes his descriptions of voice, sound, and silence. Drawing on Ralph Savarese’s findings of postcolonial neurology and alternative embodiment, the paper analyzes how Mukhopadhyay’s life writing challenges neurotypical perceptions of the world and how it further contradicts the biomedical model of ASD. It is admittedly difficult to read his highly poetical books without wondering how they could have been written by a person with ASD and subsequently relating them to questions of credibility. By highlighting the importance of refraining from an exclusive (confining) biomedical reading, this article proposes an extension of the concept of neurodiversity to neurodiverse storytelling. Furthermore, Mukhopadhyay’s texts serve as a relevant example for a broader critical discussion about both the emphasis Narrative Medicine places upon oral communication and the widely proposed application of ‘narratological tools’ to better understand patients’ orally transmitted narratives. Eventually, this could contribute to a better understanding of the implications of illness and otherness as attributed to them by a society shaped by biomedical and neurotypical notions. The ongoing discussion about the aims, scope, and future potential of the Medical Humanities calls for a (self-)critical exam ination of established theories and methods. This objective led to the formation of Critical Medical Humanities with a strong focus on the practical capabilities of the field, not primarily on its theoretical definitions. Notwithstanding the various key elements of different streams within the field, combining the humanities and medicine with the goal of improving clinical care inevitably means balancing each discipline’s strengths and the professional expertise of participating scientists while including the individual patient’s experiences. Ultimately, this article approaches the question, which voices are heard – in the context of perceptions of health/illness, neurodiversity, and otherness as well as within the interdisciplinary dialog that forms the Medical Humanities
Im Gespräch mit... Christina Lammer
Full text linkDie Soziologin, Kultur-, Kommunikationswissenschafterin, Autorin und Videomacherin Christina Lammer gibt im Gespräch mit Julia Pröll Einblick in ihre – unter anderem im Operationssaal verortete– künstlerische Arbeit
Von ‚maladie‘ und ‚bruit‘: Geräusche im medizinischen Kontext in Louis-Ferdinand Célines Voyage au bout de la nuit und Guerre
Full text linkThe writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Celine published his most famous novel Voyage au bout de la nuit in 1932; this book had a major influence on French literature. The plot of the novel takes the protagonist Ferdinand Bardamu from the scenes of the First World War to Africa, to the USA and from there back to France, where he works as a doctor for the poor in the Parisian banlieues and in a psychiatric clinic. The concept of illness in its literal and metaphorical dimensions is therefore central to the interpretation of the novel. Moreover, the theme of the novel, in which medical activity is a focal point, is that sounds resulting from physical suffering or certain pathologies are encountered in many places. In general, Celine’s style is characterized by a certain immediacy that is very strongly orientated towards the spoken word. This goes hand in hand with a pronounced affinity to noise and sound as aesthetic constants that constitute meaning in the text. In its first part, this article analyses two emblematic passages from Voyage au bout de la nuit with regard to their soundscape. The connecting element in each case is the sound of dripping blood, “glou-glou”, which is combined with the noise of war in an initial war scene and with the all-drowning chatter of a sick person’s mother in a scene at the bedside after a miscarriage. In the process, it is shown how the metaphor of noise as the sonorous side of matter fits into Celine’s grotesque aesthetics. Moreover, the sounds of physical or mental suffering in Voyage au bout de la nuit are sometimes closely linked to the description of communicative phenomena, creating a soundscape around the sick that goes far beyond the communication between doctor and patient and becomes a sort of noise in which all communication comes to a standstill and the patient is ultimately drowned out. On the poetological level, Celine’s particularly direct handling of the sound material is brought into connection with the general expressive possibilities of language and literature.In a second part, analogue observations from Celine’s novelistic narrative Guerre complement the picture from Voyage au bout de la nuit. Guerre has only recently been published and has emerged from the edition of a sensational manuscript discovery some 60 years after the writer’s death. With many autobiographical elements, this text initially focuses on the events surrounding the protagonist’s war injury and his stay in hospital. Since the protagonist, like Celine himself, suffered from agonising ringing in the ears, the fixation on the ‘bruit’ at the beginning of Guerre is extremely pronounced, manifesting itself on the one hand outwardly as deafening war noise and on the other hand inwardly as a pathological chronicled ringing in the ears. Especially in view of Celine’s poetics, Guerre contains a meaningful key passage which connects Celine’s artistic production directly with the inner sounds presenting his literature conditioned by pathological noise.The writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Celine published his most famous novel Voyage au bout de la nuit in 1932; this book had a major influence on French literature. The plot of the novel takes the protagonist Ferdinand Bardamu from the scenes of the First World War to Africa, to the USA and from there back to France, where he works as a doctor for the poor in the Parisian banlieues and in a psychiatric clinic. The concept of illness in its literal and metaphorical dimensions is therefore central to the interpretation of the novel. Moreover, the theme of the novel, in which medical activity is a focal point, is that sounds resulting from physical suffering or certain pathologies are encountered in many places. In general, Celine’s style is characterized by a certain immediacy that is very strongly orientated towards the spoken word. This goes hand in hand with a pronounced affinity to noise and sound as aesthetic constants that constitute meaning in the text. In its first part, this article analyses two emblematic passages from Voyage au bout de la nuit with regard to their soundscape. The connecting element in each case is the sound of dripping blood, “glou-glou”, which is combined with the noise of war in an initial war scene and with the all-drowning chatter of a sick person’s mother in a scene at the bedside after a miscarriage. In the process, it is shown how the metaphor of noise as the sonorous side of matter fits into Celine’s grotesque aesthetics. Moreover, the sounds of physical or mental suffering in Voyage au bout de la nuit are sometimes closely linked to the description of communicative phenomena, creating a soundscape around the sick that goes far beyond the communication between doctor and patient and becomes a sort of noise in which all communication comes to a standstill and the patient is ultimately drowned out. On the poetological level, Celine’s particularly direct handling of the sound material is brought into connection with the general expressive possibilities of language and literature.In a second part, analogue observations from Celine’s novelistic narrative Guerre complement the picture from Voyage au bout de la nuit. Guerre has only recently been published and has emerged from the edition of a sensational manuscript discovery some 60 years after the writer’s death. With many autobiographical elements, this text initially focuses on the events surrounding the protagonist’s war injury and his stay in hospital. Since the protagonist, like Celine himself, suffered from agonising ringing in the ears, the fixation on the ‘bruit’ at the beginning of Guerre is extremely pronounced, manifesting itself on the one hand outwardly as deafening war noise and on the other hand inwardly as a pathological chronicled ringing in the ears. Especially in view of Celine’s poetics, Guerre contains a meaningful key passage which connects Celine’s artistic production directly with the inner sounds presenting his literature conditioned by pathological noise
Postmortale Menschenwürde zwischen Pietät und Professionalität: Plädoyer für eine Schweigeminute im klinischen Alltag
Full text linkoai:ojs2.revisit-journal:article/1Death is an inevitable part of clinical practice and affects, in its very own way, not only relatives and friends but also those who took care of a patient in the very last moments of his or her life. Considering that time is a more than limited resource in Western health care systems, it is, however, all too often challenging for the clinical team to pause and pay respect to the life that has passed and the unfathomability of human finiteness. While in Western cultures, silence is commonly regarded as a (ritualized) expression of respect in the context of death, in clinical everyday life it is thus no matter of course to meet the end of human life not only on a physical but also metaphysical level. Instead, death tends to become drowned out by a strident clinging to the daily routines of patient care, in the course of which accompanying noises may turn into a roaring (inhuman) cacophony which may not do justice to the dignity of the dead, the relatives and the clinic team. With that said, the article at hand focusses on forms of bidding farewell in clinical patient care, with an emphasis on postmortem silence. Drawing on examples out of literature, medical ethics, and the law, I will plead for a minute’s silence in everyday clinical practice, as a possible means to interrupt the noise of medicine in the immediate aftermath of death in order to honor the dignity of both the dead and the living.Death is an inevitable part of clinical practice and affects, in its very own way, not only relatives and friends but also those who took care of a patient in the very last moments of his or her life. Considering that time is a more than limited resource in Western health care systems, it is, however, all too often challenging for the clinical team to pause and pay respect to the life that has passed and the unfathomability of human finiteness. While in Western cultures, silence is commonly regarded as a (ritualized) expression of respect in the context of death, in clinical everyday life it is thus no matter of course to meet the end of human life not only on a physical but also metaphysical level. Instead, death tends to become drowned out by a strident clinging to the daily routines of patient care, in the course of which accompanying noises may turn into a roaring (inhuman) cacophony which may not do justice to the dignity of the dead, the relatives and the clinic team. With that said, the article at hand focusses on forms of bidding farewell in clinical patient care, with an emphasis on postmortem silence. Drawing on examples out of literature, medical ethics, and the law, I will plead for a minute’s silence in everyday clinical practice, as a possible means to interrupt the noise of medicine in the immediate aftermath of death in order to honor the dignity of both the dead and the living