Week 3 Journal: Illness and Narrative Power
What are the motivating factors which cause us to ascribe harmful cultural meaning to illness? What are the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the often indiscriminate nature of disease? The challenge for us is inherent in such sense-making is the need to attribute cause, and by extension, blame (Kleinman, 1989). We might blame disease on perceived immoral behavior, as still happens with the HIV/AIDS virus. Or assign disease to places βover thereβ such as Spanish flu, West Nile virus, or more recently to the Chinese plague of coronavirus (Kaur, 2020). Such attribution is often highly politicized, and augments a populist narrative of invasive threat from outside. It positions an illness narrative framed as them and us.
But these narratives are also the ones media outlets use to inform and educate. I spent some time this week with the original BBC broadcasts of the Ethiopian famine from 1984 (Buerk, 1984). The reporting which motivated global support in the Live Aid concerts. The journalism contextualizes the famine as the result of long-term structural violence (Farmer, 1996). Of drought, multiple civil wars, and lack of aid. It describes the famine as biblical, the closest thing to hell on earth, over footage which confirms a narrative of unimaginable mass human suffering (Buerk, 1984). The story is told through the illness narratives of individuals, but also, as in Bruellβs film (Bruell, 2020), the frustration of those on the ground trying to help. Itβs the narrative of individuals and caregivers combined which was able to galvanize support. Their shared hopelessness brought into our living rooms compels us to help. As a global citizen, I still feel the shame and hopelessness of not doing enough.
References
Bruell, L. (2020). Oli Otya? Life and Loss in Rural Uganda. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://canvas.upenn.edu/courses/1781220/pages/week-3-required-video-1-17-06?module_item_id=29900550.
Buerk, M. (1984). BBC News 10/23/84 Michael Buerk (Highest Quality). YouTube.com. [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYOj_6OYuJc.
Farmer, P. (1996). On Suffering and Structural Violence. Daedalus , Winter, 1996, Vol. 125, No. 1. [Digital File]. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20027362.pdf.
Kaur, H. (2020). Yes, we long have referred to disease outbreaks by geographic places. Hereβs why we shouldnβt anymore. CNN.com. Retrieved from: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/28/us/disease-outbreaks-coronavirus-naming-trnd/index.html.
Kleinman, A. (1989). The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, And The Human Condition. Basic Books. [Digital File]. Retrieved from: https://canvas.upenn.edu/courses/1781220/files/133613891?module_item_id=29900548.
