Accompanying her mother for her ECT treatment at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, Washington, Lauren W. Westerfield devours Jean Frémon’s Now, Now, Louison over two consecutive nights. Frémon’s book, as he states and Westerfield herself echoes, is a “portrait in motion.” Rather than a crude biography, it is composed as the inner dialogue…
Tag: the body
Care as a Living Terrain in My Body
“Shared bacterial compositions can do wonders for communality.” The words are ringing in my ears. I wear a headset, which has been worn by dozens of others before me. An invisible mouth has been whispering to us all. So, are we part of the same community? Before stepping into “The Operation Room,” a small gallery…
Anxiety and acceptance: A ritual death under pandemic conditions
Miki Chase // On Wednesday, October 7th, 2020, an unnamed Jain woman in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India, died on her 64th birthday. Local news reported that she had recently been discharged from a private hospital, having recovered from coronavirus and tested negative following treatment for Covid-19. A doctor at the hospital, however, who pointed out that she had…
The Virus, the Market, and the Body
Bojan Srbinovski // What has the COVID-19 pandemic taught the medical humanities about the body? On Monday, November 9, the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced the encouraging preliminary findings of a COVID-19 vaccine study that suggested an efficacy of more than 90 percent. This welcome news came as a bright spot against the background of…