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Bridging memoir with key concepts in disability studies, narratology, and philosophy of medicine,
Metagnosis: Revelatory Narratives of Health and Identity explores an experience many of us have faced: Learning of a longstanding fact about oneself, whether it is a medical condition or new knowledge concerning one's genetic heritage. How do we understand these revelations? What do they have to teach us about the way we construct medical knowledge? How can we empower ourselves to navigate these terms? What are the implications for our understanding of identity itself? With a highly readable yet intellectually nuanced and profoundly interdisciplinary approach,
Metagnosis draws the reader into dialogue with these essential questions.
List of contents
- Preface
- Part I: Metagnosis
- Chapter 1: Diagnosis
- Chapter 2: Treatment
- Part II: Sight
- Chapter 3: Flatsight
- Chapter 4: Halfsight
- Chapter 5: Blindsight
- Part III: Seeing Metagnosis
- Chapter 6: Recognition
- Chapter 7: Subversion
- Chapter 8: Renegotiation
- Part IV: Looking Forward
- Chapter 9: Metagnostic Narratives
- Chapter 10: Freedom
- Bibliography
About the author
Danielle Spencer, Ph.D. is a faculty member of the Columbia University Narrative Medicine Program. Co-author of Perkins-Prize-winning The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2017), her scholarly and creative work appears in diverse outlets from The Lancet to Ploughshares. Formerly David Byrne's Art Director, Spencer holds a B.A. from Yale University, an M.S. in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University, a Ph.D. from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and is a 2019 MacDowell Fellow.
Summary
Bridging memoir with key concepts in narratology, philosophy and history of medicine, and disability studies, this book identifies and names the phenomenon of metagnosis: the experience of learning in adulthood of a longstanding condition. It can occur when the condition has remained undetected (e.g. colorblindness) and/or when the diagnostic categories themselves have shifted (e.g. ADHD). More broadly, it can occur with unexpected revelations bearing upon selfhood, such as surprising genetic test results. Though this phenomenon has received relatively scant attention, learning of an unknown condition is often a significant and bewildering revelation, one that subverts narrative expectations and customary categories. How do we understand these revelations? In addressing this topic Danielle Spencer approaches narrative medicine as a robust research methodology comprising interdisciplinarity, narrative attentiveness, and the creation of writerly texts.
Beginning with Spencer's own experience, the book explores the issues raised by metagnosis, from communicability to narrative intelligibility to different ways of seeing. Next, it traces the distinctive metagnostic narrative arc through the stages of recognition, subversion, and renegotiation, discussing this trajectory in light of a range of metagnostic experiences-from Blade Runner to real-world mid-life diagnoses. Finally, it situates metagnosis in relation to genetic revelations and the broader discourses concerning identity. Spencer proposes that better understanding metagnosis will not simply aid those directly affected, but will serve as a bellwether for how we will all navigate advancing biomedical and genomic knowledge, and how we may fruitfully interrogate the very notion of identity.
Additional text
Danielle Spencer's Metagnosis: Revelatory Narratives of Health and Identity is a landmark and deeply imaginative contribution to work at the interfaces of biomedicine, psychiatry, humanities, literatures, popular culture, cultural studies, disability studies, memoir, and personal narrative. It fills an important niche in the interdisciplinary domains of health humanities, medical humanities, and narrative medicine and is a welcome contribution to these fields.
