Divergent Discourses: The Epistemology of Healing in an American Medical Clinic and a Kwara‘ae Village

Using the theoretical constructs “biographical disruption” and “limit experience” and also methodological frameworks from autoethnography and discourse analysis, we discuss the divergent ways in which language and healing are conceptualized and performed, first in an American medical clinic and then by traditional healers in Kwara‘ae (Solomon Islands). Discourses at the Dallas clinic draw on allopathic and complementary medicine and in emphasizing a scientific approach to talk about illness and treatment, were found to create ambiguity in patients’ sense of their physical and metaphysical identities. In contrast, Kwara‘ae healing involves disappearing into silence, in which the physical and metaphysical are never separated, and where healing occurs.