Sensory and narrative identity: the narration of illness process among chronic renal sufferers in Ireland
Title:
Sensory and narrative identity: the narration of illness process among chronic renal sufferers in Ireland
Author:
Kierans, Ciara M. Maynooth, N. U. I.
Appeared in:
Anthropology & medicine
Paging:
Volume 8 (2001) nr. 2-3 pages 237-253
Year:
2001-08-01
Contents:
This paper explores the lived experiences of End Stage Renal Failure. It charts the experiential shifts across the trajectories of this chronic condition and investigates a phenomenological re-creation of body and realignment of self. Meaning is culturally produced, mediated by body and senses, illuminating the relationship between self and society. The point of departure for this paper is not the established criteria of diagnosis, but that of sensation, situating the locus of human meaning within a more localised explanatory nexus, the sentient body. It is from this point onwards that lived experiences of renal failure are 'emplotted' through telling and retelling the human condition of illness. Processes of medical intervention and alterations in sensory experience characterise much of this condition. They are exemplified by the re-construction of the body/self through diagnosis, the impact of the 'fistula' in preparation for dialysis, the temporary suspension of life on dialysis and the massive implications of transplantation on issues of physiological and personal sovereignty, in particular, the dramatic changes it brings to understanding the re-construction of the self in relation to an alien 'other'. At times, these events are narrated as part of a life-process, a coherent trajectory of illness experience. At other times, they are expressed as events ricocheting the person backwards and forwards, where the predictability of the past and the future has become complicated through the experience of rejection or threat of death.
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