Medicine and Empathy in Contemporary British Fiction
A Critical Intervention in Medical Humanities
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Edinburgh University Press
Published:13th May '19
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
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- Hardback£95.00(9780748686186)
Offers a new understanding of empathy and its relation to medicine and literature, as a critical intervention into the medical humanities This book marks a critical intervention in the medical humanities that takes issue with its understanding of empathy as something that one has. Drawing on phenomenology and feminist affect theory, it positions empathy as something that one does and that is embedded within structural, institutional, and cultural relations of power. More than this, it questions the assumption that empathy is limited to the clinical relation, thinking about medicine as more broadly defined. Combining theoretical argument with literary case studies of books by Mark Haddon, Pat Barker, Ian McEwan, Aminatta Forna and Kazuo Ishiguro, this book also contends that contemporary fiction is not a vehicle for accessing another’s illness experience, but is itself engaging critically with the question of empathy and its limits. Key Features Provides a strong conceptual underpinning for the notion of empathy, drawing on phenomenology and feminist affect theoryRelates the idea of empathy not only to the clinical relation but also to medicine more broadly definedRepositions literature’s role in the medical humanities from a vehicle to access patient experience to a strategic intervention into current debates on empathy and its effects
Groundbreaking work -- J. D. Harding, Saint Leo University * CHOICE connect October 2018 Vol. 56 No. 2 *
[An] erudite, wide-ranging, and supremely helpful examination of a concept―empathy―that is often credited to the humanities yet has tended to send literary critics scuttling for cover. [...] Whitehead’s monograph breaks the silence, offering a welcome intervention into this divided landscape. -- Jane F. Thraikill, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill * Contemporary Literature *
A highly relevant intervention into mainstream modes of reading fiction within the medical humanities. -- Maaike Hommes, International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture * KULT_online *
Medicine and Empathy in Contemporary British Fiction offers a striking and innovative approach to empathy within a dually literary and medical context. The book is well-structured to reveal the thematic and critical connections between each chapter, building an exhaustive picture of the role that empathy plays in individual, structural, and cultural relations of power. [...] This book is a welcome intervention in these fields, and will also be of interest to researchers of contemporary fiction, medical ethics, and biopolitics. -- Rosalind Crocker, University of Sheffield * The British Society for Literature and Science *
Drawing on a range of contemporary fiction, philosophy and medical research, this important book expands the established categories of the medical and health humanities of ethics, education and experience by exploring and analysing in detail the role of empathy: its original and striking argument make it a significant contribution to the field. -- Robert Eagleston, Royal Holloway
ISBN: 9781474452410
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 352g
224 pages