Notes from the Body: Health, Illness, Trauma

This book was conceptualised prior to the global reckoning with 'this mortal body' unleashed by the Covid pandemic. It is an attempt to (re)turn attention to the body as that through which so much of our humanness is experienced, mediated, enjoyed, suffered, understood and expressed. But Covid forcibly returned us to the body in ways that none of us could ever have imagined. Perhaps Notes from the Body could not be more timely. The variety of possible bodies for which the contributors seek a voice reminds us of the multiple ways in which we may be human. Through various creative forms, the pieces in this volume present the body as, among other things: sick, violated, racialised, healed, performing, ageing, (multiply) gendered, spiritual, abused, 'disabled', broken, sexual, animalised, medical, controlled, interrupted, failing, rejected and abject. Several themes recur: humanisation and dehumanisation; the loss or recovery of agency; dignity and humiliation; violation of the bounds of self; the integrity or wholeness of the body; the body's betrayal; and mourning or celebrating the body.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1 The Darkness of Covid-Death Chapter 2 Architeuthis Chapter 3 Survivor Chapter 4 Theft Chapter 5 It's when everything seems to be falling apart Chapter 6 Notes by a Mother on Bipolar Disorder Chapter 7 Notes from an Archive of the Body in Movement Chapter 8 'Between Substance and Shadow': Investigations into the Cynanthropy of Gary the Dog Chapter 9 World Remaking: Visual Impairment and the Process of Somatic Reorientation Chapter 10 One Body, Different Minds Chapter 11 White Flight Chapter 12 Lines Land Slant Chapter 13 Finding the Words in Ten Movements Chapter 14 Lights Out! Chapter 15 Staring Death in the Eye: Revisiting the Tribulations and Joys of Hospitalisation in Post-apartheid South Africa Chapter 16 Unmade Chapter 17 For My Father Chapter 18 Photographs Chapter 19 Cancer Survivor around My Mother's Neck Chapter 20 Lego Chapter 21 It's Only a Question Chapter 22 Alice, in the Waiting Room Contributors

About the Author :
Duncan Brown is Professor of English in the Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research at the University of the Western Cape. Kobus Moolman is Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of the Western Cape. Nkosinathi Sithole was, until recently, Associate Professor of English at the University of the Western Cape, until he resigned to focus full-time on his writing.