Breathing Bodies vs. Brain Death: Memoir as Method to Interrogate Incompatible Organ Donation Narratives

• In Event: Diagnosing Death: Critical STS Perspectives - III

Abstract

In this presentation, I will discuss the use and development of a hybrid creative nonfiction writing method, informed by an STS perspective, to interrogate and understand brain death and the “gift of life” organ donation narrative in the composition of a memoir/history-in-progress about 1) my father, who almost became an organ donor after a stroke 20 years ago, and 2) the (false) ontological effects of the mind-body / human-nature dichotomy. The project also examines the dominant narratives that make up or affect the story’s “actors” – for instance, my father’s beliefs about life support technology, the biomedical stance on brain death, the sanitized “gift of life” story, the hero-surgeon narrative, and the hidden mixed feelings of some medical professionals toward transplant. Each of these narratives relies on particular semantics, emotions, and facts — and bends toward particular outcomes — which are not compatible with the other narratives.

I use insights not only from STS and the academic history of medicine but also trauma studies, the medical humanities, and – especially – advanced practitioners of memoir and fiction writing. After many false starts and detours on this project, for me the only way to tell and understand this story is to step outside of all professional medical and academic milieus except the creative one, where (given a good compositional structure), all doors can be open, any actor can interact with any other, and the incommensurable becomes sensible.

Author

• Christine Wenc, Greenwood History