Aesthetics, rationality, and medical anthropology

Abstract

Shortly after I had finished writing the last major chapter of this book – on the narrative representation of illness – a former professor of mine asked what I had discussed in the Morgan Lectures. I replied that I was developing a theory of culture and illness from the perspective of aesthetics, examining how illness is formulated as an “aesthetic object.” I later thought back on what I had said with considerable anxiety, because with the exception of reviewing some of the literature on narrativity the book hardly addresses the issue of aesthetics at all. Furthermore, this surely represents a small part of what this book has been about and a very partial way of conceiving a program for medical anthropology. Nonetheless, my rather offhand comment suggested an interpretation of where I had emerged after nearly two years of work on this project, and may serve as the starting point for work to come. Studies of narrative and story-telling, of art and the aesthetic response may ultimately have more to offer for comparative, cross-cultural studies of illness and healing than is immediately obvious, stimulating insights quite different than those provided by framing the field as the comparative study of human ecology or political economy or social structure or illness behavior.