A language of Ill Feelings

Defining the undefined in Alice Hattrick's Ill Feelings (2021)

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3608042
AutoresMylène Branco (Independent researcher, autor de correspondencia)
Año2025
Volumen34
Número3
Páginas336-346
Fecha de publicación2025-04-03
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Gender Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0958-9236 • E-ISSN: 1465-3869
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09589236.2024.2360492
OpenAlexW4400510341
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas9

In Ill Feelings (2021), Alice Hattrick shares their experience and history of ME/CFS, a chronic illness that not only dictates their own life but also their mother’s. Drawing on their own diary entries, medical documents, and literary and artistic material, Hattrick blends the voices of women whose illnesses cannot be cured in a standardized medical fashion, because their origins remain unknown. Hattrick’s narrative echoes the reactions of disbelief individuals dealing with Long COVID and other forms of post-viral fatigue have experienced. It is a defiant account of illness that resists the gendered nature of medical diagnosis and seeks to undo the structures that continue to question and condemn women patients to a life in hiding. In this article, I explore the ways in which Hattrick re-establishes truth to the illness narratives of women. Building on knowledge that has shaped the medical humanities, I argue that Hattrick redefines what doctors have termed their hysterical language, one they share with their mother, to create a network of support for women that encourages them to speak their language of ill feelings, find understanding, and thereby oppose institutional medicine

Art history · Critically ill · Feeling · Intensive care medicine · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Empathy and Medical Education · History · Medicine · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Social Psychology