Affect and its Circulation in and Beyond Richard Selzer's “Imelda”

Bibliographic Data

ID22008221
AuthorsJiena Sun (0000-0002-6379-0105, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume22
Issue3
Pages206-217
Publication date2020-09-14
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInterdisciplinary Literary Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2161-427X • E-ISSN: 1524-8429
PublisherThe Pennsylvania State University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5325/intelitestud.22.3.0206
OpenAlexW3093749619
LanguageEN
References cited20

Appreciation and literary representation of affective responses in medical encounters help resist the reductionist temptation to quantify and simplify illness experience with test data, images, and medical jargon. Then how do these representations of affect make a difference in the medical profession? Surgeon writer Richard Selzer's short story “Imelda” (1982) might offer a unique perspective to examine physicians' affective engagements with illness experience and illuminate how literature works through the representation of affect in medical contexts. In light of Sarah Ahmed's ideas of circulation in affective economies and the forming of affective communities, I read Imelda's deformity and the narrative as two affect objects which trigger the circulation of affect and the formation of a transformative network of affect among all those who are involved in the dramatic event of a post mortem operation. I argue that the emergence of affect in medical encounters energizes literary representation, while literature captures affect with language, and animates affective circulation in and beyond the narrative. More importantly, affective circulation occasioned by physician writing brings in new possibilities to humanize medicine

Affect theory · Art · Linguistics · Narrative · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Visual arts · Communication · Empathy and Medical Education · History · Law · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access