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Narratives of the Body and History: Illness in Judgement on the Soviet Past
Author(s) -
Skultans Vieda
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.00158
Subject(s) - narrative , yardstick , judgement , injustice , politics , aggression , causality (physics) , psychology , mental illness , state (computer science) , social psychology , sociology , history , criminology , law , political science , psychiatry , literature , mental health , art , physics , geometry , mathematics , algorithm , quantum mechanics , computer science
This paper focuses on the narrative of a Latvian countrywoman. In so doing it explores the unstable relationship between history, memory and the body. In particular, it looks at the way in which certain historical events have come to be annexed to the body and are used to explain the development of psychological and mental illness. This account describes state‐perpetrated violence, and connects individual ills to a shared history and collective suffering. My informant offered her life story as testimony to the violence and injustice of past experience. The attempt to channel political discontent by the generous provision of medical diagnostic categories is unsuccessful. Rather, bodily experience plays a central role as a yardstick against which the unreasonableness of history is judged.