Transcript Living in Mortal Time Clinical and literary - Aging Re

Living in Mortal Time
Clinical and Literary Perspectives
Mary DeShazer, Ph.D., Professor Emerita, Departments of English,
Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Wake Forest University
Richard P. McQuellon, Ph.D. Professor of Medicine, Director,
Psychosocial Oncology and Cancer Patient Support Programs, Wake
Forest Baptist Health Comprehensive Cancer Center
Autothanatography:
Life writing about dying, a sub-genre of illness
narratives
• How do people who are terminally ill think autobiographically?
(Susanna Egan, "Mirror Talk")
• How can readers best bear ethical witness to the published
stories of the dying?
• What new insights into aging and mortality might these literary
works offer us?
Wake Forest School of Medicine
Key concepts for understanding women's cancer
autothanatographies:
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Bodies/Mourning/Witness
Testimonial Agency
Reader-Writer Contract
Reckoning with Mortality through Humor,
Spirituality, Serenity, or Outrage
Wake Forest School of Medicine
Premature aging, loss of anticipated future, and defiant
humor in young women's autothanatographies:
• Ruth Picardie, "Before I Say Goodbye"
• Miriam Engelberg, "Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person“
• Charlee Brodsky and Stephanie Byram, "Knowing Stephanie"
Bodily betrayal, cultural invisibility, and cancer
legacies in older women's autothanatographies
• Elizabeth Bryan, "Singing the Life: The Story of a Family in the
Shadow of Cancer”
• Susan Gubar, "Memoir of a Debulked Woman: Enduring Ovarian
Cancer"
Wake Forest School of Medicine
Consider these questions
• Why are so many women today chronicling
their experiences of stage-four cancer in
testimonial and memorial projects?
• What ethical and cultural work is accomplished
in these works of autothanatography?
• How might readers honor ill memoirists
through empathic identification with their
struggles?
• What insights do these works offer into our
own journeys through mortal time?
Wake Forest School of Medicine
Mortal Time
• the experience of humans beings
confronting the prospect of death
• acute awareness of one’s own mortality.
Wake Forest School of Medicine
Ars Moriendi- Triumph over Avarice
Master E. S.
Wake Forest School of Medicine
Erik Erikson psychosocial Stages of
development
Wisdom: ego integrity vs. despair
(maturity, 65 – death)
• Existential Question: Is it Okay to Have Been
Me?
• Louise – Holding on
• Betty – Letting go
Wake Forest School of Medicine
Hope for a good exit- Is there a right
way to die?
How does one go about dying?
Who on earth is going to teach me –
The world
is filled with people
who have never died
By Franz Wright
Wake Forest School of Medicine
Responding to recurrent disease
Don’t freak out, it’s just a save the date card
Wake Forest School of Medicine