Illness narratives on social media: bodies, pain and politics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5902/2175497771802Keywords:
Illness Narratives, Bodies, InstagramAbstract
Testimonies about being ill, which for a long time remained in the private sphere, are gaining more and more media space in contemporary times.This article analyzes how pain and illness narratives are constructed on online platforms. We analyzed two Instagram accounts of people who organize their posts based on their experiences with pain and illness. The observation is based on works that discuss the possibility of communicating pain (Scarry, 1987; Bourke, 2014) and that address the characteristics of illness narratives (Frank, 1995; Jurecic, 2012). Based on the case studies, we observed that the illness narratives analyzed do not go against medical knowledge or express a politicization of patienthood (Diedrich, 2007), but seek to demonstrate, in different ways, how pain and illness, when unavoidable, produce new ways of living.
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