Monday 4th July - Thursday 7th July 2005
Mansfield College, Oxford

Conference Programme, Abstracts & Papers

Session 13: Identity, Description and Representation
Chair: Michele Wates

Surgery and Identity
Isabelle Lange
Health Policy Unit, Department of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom

In late 2004, radio stations began announcing the arrival of a Christian hospital ship that would dock in Benin’s main port and offer free surgeries to as many people as they could help in the four months they were in the country.  In November, just days after the ship arrived, a screening to select patients was held that drew over 3,000 people from as far as 600 kilometers to the north and neighboring countries Togo and Nigeria to a little stadium in the nation’s largest city, Cotonou.  My work is based on ethnographical fieldwork begun before the arrival of the ship and continued after its departure, and is centered around the stories and experiences of patients that were treated onboard, collected through interviews and participant observation over a six month period both onboard the ship and in patients’ homes.  Although the ship treats patients for a variety of medical symptoms *VVF, burn and scar tissue, and cataracts, to name a few* the patients I consider for this paper all had surgery for a facial deformity *goiters, cysts, cleft lip or tumors weighing as much as 5 pounds that have had the chance to grow rampantly because a lack of medical infrastructure assisting many of Benin’s residents.  In order to understand the effects of such a dramatic physical healing transformation on a person’s sense of identity and their relationships within their community, I explore how and through what avenues they have presented their condition and sought out health care to deal with their illness.  What interests me in particular about these individuals is that they cannot hide their illness without hiding themselves.  With their illness they are highly visible, which has shaped their relationships with people they know as well as with strangers.  I look at what happens after the surgery, when one has been healed and becomes invisible once again.

The Aesthetics of Self-Representation in Pregnancy and Childbirth
Lisa Szczerba
Department of Design and Management, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY, UnitedStates of America

Theorists from a variety of fields assert that women’s bodies are often the site where much of their significant life experience transpires (Suleiman, 1986; Heilbrun, 1999; Bauer, 1998; Lauter, 1984; Pollock, 1999), and thus these bodies serve as the backdrop for much thinking about the female self. Moreover, many have argued that the bodily experience of pregnancy / childbirth is a potential plot point around which a woman’s story pivots. It has been suggested that this vital connection between female experience and embodiment has its roots in women’s privileged reproductive status as child bearers. It is therefore not surprising that so many women – both those who identify themselves as artists and those who don’t – follow the impulse to express this bodily phenomenon through creative means.
This paper will explore women’s artistic self-representations of pregnancy and childbirth, highlighting common representational strategies, themes and motifs. It has been informed by the literature from a wide range of disciplines: much of it bridging work from psychoanalysis, women’s studies, cultural studies, nursing scholarship and aesthetic criticism. By acknowledging works of “everyday creativity” as well as analyzing those of established, artistic practice, it is my hope that the audience will gain insight into some of the ways in which women creatively represent their experiences. The study includes a close, aesthetic analysis of: Carol Maso’s (2000) journal, The Room Lit by Roses, Rian Brown’s (1999) short autobiographical film, Presence of Water, and Anne Harris’ (1996-97) painting, Second Portrait with Max, from the painting series With Max. This study may be useful for practitioners to employ when working with aesthetic representations of such bodily phenomena and the women that create them. This paper will also address constraints in normative thinking about experiences of the pregnant body as situated in either health or illness, thus challenging the audience to consider such bodily phenomena from a more elaborated perspective than the health / illness duality.

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