Closure as Cure: Tropes in the Exploration of Bodily and Social Disorder [and Comments and Replies]

Signifying the Pandemics: Metaphors of AIDS, Cancer, and Heart Disease

“…Diseases are no doubt an important part of our bodily experience and can shed light on the social construction of the body as a cultural medium of expression and performance (Benoist and Cathebras 1990;Featherstone et al 1991;Lock 1993). Metaphors are an important part of the social construction of the body, healthy or ill (Frankenberg 1986;Herzfeld 1986). Diseases are particularly important for the metaphorization of the self/body (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987) because they upset our traditional Western, Cartesian mind/body dichotomy.…”

Cultivating the Body: Anthropology and Epistemologies of Bodily Practice and Knowledge

“…Devische asserts that symptoms of illness are culturally patterned manifestations of a "dismembered symbolic operation." He posits that efficacy of ritual and healing ceremonies lies in the cultural framing of subjectively experienced feelings of inchoateness (16,17,27,32,33,67,74,117,145,242), www.annualreviews.org/aronline Annual Reviews thus producing "symbolic closure" (102). Devische examines how this accomplished through body boundary signification among the Yaka of Zaire related to their concepts of spatio/temporal order (43, 44).…”

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“…2 For an insightful application of semiotic principles in ethnographic analysis see Herzfeld 1981;1986;1987. 3 Pink, also, argued that, while multimodality scholars make approaches to ethnography, the interest in the multimodality approach among anthropologists is not equally great (2011: 273). 4 Kress assumed for the time being a relation of 'cooperation' and 'complementarity,' to consider later on, if the tasks persist, a merger (2011: 241).…”