Intimacy and its violation: on the experience of illness in contemporary women's poetry

Abstract

This article discusses selected aspects of the problem of self-perception by a sick individual, specific to the poetry of Polish women of the last few decades. The aim of the analysis is to show that the body is central to the illness experience and that a new type of intimacy appears in connection with its ailment. This is a „clinical intimacy”, the specificity of which is defined by a confrontation with suffering, the proliferation of the feeling of isolation, the intensity of emotions related to making the body public, its discovery and exposure in a hospital setting. The issue of „gender expropriation” in a marginal situation is also important, as is the scar, wound, physical violation of the body boundary, read as the „punctum” of the patient's body. The interpretation emphasises the individualization of artistic representations of the aforementioned aspects of „clinical intimacy”. The anthropological research perspective adopted in the sketch allows for the diagnosis of the subject matter in the context of the process of shaping subjective identity.