The Body of Illness: Narrativity, Embodiment and Relationality in Doctoring and Nursing

Abstract

In this article, I will discuss the connections between narrativity, embodiment and relationality in the practise of doctoring and nursing. In particular, I will elucidate these connections by discussing the patient chart as a diagnostic tool that also determines the kind of relationship the doctor or nurse adopts vis-à-vis the patient and thus what kind of embodiment becomes the subject of examination. This becomes a way to seek the ill body; the body to which medicine devotes its care. The perspective is derived primarily from contemporary philosophy, the history of ideas and the medical humanities. The task of the article is critical in the sense that I aim to analyse the connections mentioned to shed light on their historical and philosophical foundations and thus be able to suggest possible alternatives to accepted practice. I will begin by discussing the narrative basis of diagnosis and showing the philosophical differences between the inanimate body and the lived body. I will thereafter discuss what may be called ‘bodily absence’ before returning to the patient chart and how the chart can stage various connections between narrativity, embodiment and relationality in doctoring and nursing.