title: From sick role to narrative subject: An analytic memoir.
abstract: Questions of illness experience and identity are discussed, based on the analysis of a story told by the breast-cancer activist Audre Lorde. Displacing Parsons' conceptualization of illness as a sick role, I understand the ill person as a narrative subject, defined by discursive possibilities. Three discourses of illness are proposed: the medical institutional discourse, the discourse of illness experience, and the pink-ribbon discourse. Each has its preferred narratives. These discourses overlap and mutually affect each other. Problems with the Foucauldian conceptualization of the subject are considered, and a dialogical imagination of relations of governmentality is proposed.
authors.affiliation: University of Calgary, Canada; Betanien University College, Norway arthurwfrank@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Arthur W
authors.initials: AW
authors.lastname: Frank
mesh_terms: D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D005260:Female; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D055809:Illness Behavior; D008297:Male; D033262:Narration; D012803:Sick Role; D012962:Sociology, Medical
keywords: Audre Lorde; Michel Foucault; Talcott Parsons; governmentality; illness experience; narrative medicine; narrative subject; sick role