The Social Construction of Illness Experience as Epistemic Leverage

• In Event: 209 - Theory Section Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Cognitive Sociology

Abstract

This project examines published illness narratives to explore a particular sociomental mechanism--the “broadening of horizons”--that underlies a “productive” approach towards disruptive events within life narratives. A "productive" approach towards disruptive events is one that views them as developmentally productive, i.e., as catalysts for self-transformation. It contrasts with the "destructive" view, which takes disruptive events as leading to a socially deviant life, and takes for granted the commonsensical classification of the un-disrupted life as socially normative. Reversing this classification, a "productive" approach towards disruptive events interprets the un-disrupted life as a state of ignorance towards a presumed state of wholeness, and the disrupted life as enabling receptivity towards the state of wholeness. Despite extant research’s increasing interest in the biographical practice of interpreting disruptive events in productive terms, little work has been done in exploring the sociomental mechanisms that underlie the productive developmental processes catalyzed by disruptive events. My research focuses on the particular sociomental mechanism that I call “the broadening of horizons.” Taking a formalist approach to the study of influential published illness narratives that account for experience of diverse physical and/or mental illnesses, I illuminate a two-phase pattern in narrating the process of broadening horizons via the catalysis of illness. In the first, "de-familiarization" phase, narrators describe the process of realizing the non-obviousness of their previously taken-for-granted horizons. In the second, "enhancement" phase, based on the prior relativization of the previously taken-for-granted horizons, narrators recount their experience of becoming “freed” to explore previously "backgrounded" features of reality.

Author

• Hwa-Yen Huang, State University of New Jersey-Rutgers