?How can we know the dancer from the dance??: Discourses of the self-body

Abstract

Critiques of the long-standing practice of representing the body and self (mind, emotions and intellect) dualistically have led to the current efforts to theorize the unity of the body and self. The expressions "lived experience" or "lived body" emerged out of phenomenological explorations of what it means to be embodied (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). They are used to connote that the body and mind cannot be represented as separate and oppositional and that body and self live in an interrelation not only with each other, but with the world. In this paper, I focus on illness as a mode of lived experience. Specifi? cally, I explore how Sandy (pseudonym), in narrating her experiences of kidney disease and cancer, represents her body and self. The paper progresses as follows: I first describe M.M. Bakhtin's (1981) theory of authoritative and internally persuasive discourses. I use his theory both as a context in which to understand medical science as a discursive practice and as an interpretive framework for understanding Sandy's stories. Following this, I briefly discuss the postmodern turn in medical science discourse. I then describe the conceptual framework developed by Sally Gadow (1982) for understanding unity of the ill body and self as a dialectic progression. Next, I introduce Sandy and present her narratives in which she describes three events of illness in her life. The use of these personal narratives demonstrates the value of building theory from life experiences, and "communicates the richness and depth of life as it is lived" (Paget, 1990: 151). My analysis of Sandy's stories, which draws on both Gadow and Bakhtin, follows. I suggest ways in which Sandy's self-representation of her body-self in illness demonstrates both the dialectic progression advanced by Gadow and the languages of authoritative and internally persuasive discourse posed by Bakhtin.