Representing Illness: Patients, Monsters, and Microbes

This dissertation, "Representing Illness: Patients, Monsters, and Microbes" by Wing-kit, Vicky, Yau, 邱穎潔, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled Representing Illness: Patients, Monsters, and Microbes submitted by YAU Wing Kit Vicky for the degree of Master of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in February 2007 Language and visual images are two primary forms of cultural representation in our society today, and it is through representation that meanings are produced. The objective of this thesis is to examine the ways in which illness is represented culturally. For this purpose, a selection of illness narratives and films is used to illustrate how illness is not simply a manifestation of symptoms as defined in medical terms but a socially and culturally constructed experience, and hence, the representation of illness is always more than a one-sided personal story about what it feels like to be ill. This thesis is divided into three main parts, namely Patients, Monsters and Microbes. Each section aims to deal with the representation of illness from one particular perspective so that by looking at the respective texts, it becomes clear how i) the voice of the patient is re-claimed; ii) the collective sentiment is properly expressed/purged by depicting the diseased as monsters/killers, and iii) the representation of the 'other' as a health threat is re-configured. Chapter 1 is an examination of the use of autopathographies, a subgenre of autobiography, by women who have suffered from breast cancer. It shows how patients use their own illness narrative to re-claim the voice for their bodies that have been objectified, cut open and scarred. Chapter 2 turns to filmic representation to see how illness is related to both the private spaces inside our body and the public spaces of the city. For this chapter, visual representation of infectious disease illustrates the impact of an epidemic on the city space and how it is a reflection of the crises that are still fresh in our memories. Chapter 3 is an analysis of the emergence of new illnesses and it aims to assess how far we have come from using language and visual imaging to help us express and see, respectively, to being used against us in the form of a new discourse that keeps us constantly vigilant. 'Health' and 'illness' should not be understood as mutually exclusive of each other. Moreover, they are invariably tied in with technology, science and the environment which, in turn, will affect the way we understand our own (suffering) body and what illness is. I hope that by taking illness in its various forms of cultural representation, its meaning will go beyond the realm of medicine and personal experience, and becomes a new site for engaging in new forms of understanding. Word Count: 407 DOI: 10.5353/th_b3786726 Subjects: Discourse analysis, Narrative Diseases - Social aspects