From sick role to narrative subject An analytic memoir

• Published in: Health (London, England : 1997) Vol. 20; no. 1; pp. 9 - 21
• Main Author: Frank, Arthur W
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England Sage Publications, Ltd 01.01.2016; SAGE Publications; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Autobiographical literature; Breast cancer; Breast Neoplasms - history; Breast Neoplasms - psychology; Cancer; Discourse; Ethics, Medical; Female; Governmentality; History, 20th Century; Humans; Identity; Illness Behavior; Illnesses; Imagination; Lorde, Audre; Male; Medicine; Narration; Parsons, Talcott (1902-1979); Sick Role; Sociology, Medical; Talcott Parsons; Audre Lorde; governmentality; Michel Foucault; narrative medicine; narrative subject; sick role; illness experience
• ISSN: 1363-4593; 1461-7196; 1461-7196
• DOI: 10.1177/1363459315615395

Questions of illness experience and identity are discussed, based on the analysis of a story told by the breast-cancer activist Audre Lorde. Displacing Parsons’ conceptualization of illness as a sick role, I understand the ill person as a narrative subject, defined by discursive possibilities. Three discourses of illness are proposed: the medical institutional discourse, the discourse of illness experience, and the pink-ribbon discourse. Each has its preferred narratives. These discourses overlap and mutually affect each other. Problems with the Foucauldian conceptualization of the subject are considered, and a dialogical imagination of relations of governmentality is proposed.