Sundaram, Neeraja
(2019)
Human rights and the medical care narrative.
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 11 (1).
pp. 80-89.
ISSN 0975-2935
Abstract
This paper aims to find convergences in the field of Human Rights and Literature and the literary study of
illness narratives. Both these fields of study focus on the emergence of a new kind of subject via the telling
of stories that organize experiences of traumatic suffering. The central focus in Human Rights and Literary
studies continues to be on the narration of atrocities ranging from genocide, torture and imprisonment to
the condition of people inhabiting conflict zones. Literary studies of the medical memoir, a sub-genre of the
autobiography, is similarly interested in the discursive processes and strategies through which individuals
come to terms with experiencing and witnessing physical decline, death and impairment because of illness.
I hope to show in this paper that narratives of illness can be productively situated within a Human Rights
framework and will thus allow us to see these narratives as performing a crucial role in the social imaginary
of rights and ethics in the context of medical care.
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