Introduction: “The Canon Brawl: Arguments over the Canon”

Morrissey, Lee

doi:10.1007/978-1-137-04916-2_1

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“…Our argument is that the actual content of most medical humanities works and curricula has been clearly identified with ‘Western’ nations (such terminology is appropriate here, since part of our argument is that the field at present unwittingly tends to reproduce such troubling locations as the ‘Western’ and the ‘Oriental’). In our experience, curricula often make significant use of works drawn from the Western canon 7. We suspect that this more classical orientation is one of the distinctive aspects of the medical humanities with potential for renewed scholarship within the humanities themselves; but at present, it might also convey a set of elite cultural assumptions 7 8…”

Section: Medical Humanities As Expressive Of Elite Western Culturementioning

confidence: 98%

“…In our experience, curricula often make significant use of works drawn from the Western canon 7. We suspect that this more classical orientation is one of the distinctive aspects of the medical humanities with potential for renewed scholarship within the humanities themselves; but at present, it might also convey a set of elite cultural assumptions 7 8…”

Section: Medical Humanities As Expressive Of Elite Western Culturementioning

confidence: 98%

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Medical humanities as expressive of Western culture

Hooker

Noonan

2011

Med Humanities

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In this paper we articulate a growing awareness within the field of the ways in which medical humanities could be deemed expressive of Western cultural values. The authors suggest that medical humanities is culturally limited by a pedagogical and scholarly emphasis on Western cultural artefacts, as well as a tendency to enact an uncritical reliance upon foundational concepts (such as 'patient' and 'experience') within Western medicine. Both these tendencies within the field, we suggest, are underpinned by a humanistic emphasis on appreciative or receptive encounters with 'difference' among patients that may unwittingly contribute to the marginalisation of some patients and healthcare workers. While cultural difference should be acknowledged as a central preoccupation of medical humanities, we argue that the discipline must continue to expand its scholarly and critical engagements with processes of Othering in biomedicine. We suggest that such improvements are necessary in order to reflect the cultural diversification of medical humanities students, and the geographical expansion of the discipline within non-Western and/or nonAnglophone locations.It is our contention that, whatever may be the excellent intentions of its founders and practitioners, medical humanities as a field has often been strongly, though not wholly, reflective of the traditions of Western (Anglo-American and European) culture, particularly what used to be referred to as 'high' culture 1 . In this essay we outline the grounds for this perhaps provocative statement, and explore some of its implications for the field. These include the possibility that what constitutes 'the medical humanities' could differ profoundly from place to place, particularly in the developing world. A second concern is that since Western cultural traditions embody certain ideas about selfhood, patienthood, illness and medical care, the dominance of these traditions may exclude important ways of knowing and being for both Western and non-Western patients and doctors.This paper contributes to the recent communal conversations that have, of late, marked the success and expansion of the medical humanities [2][3][4][5] . The field is clearly in the process of significant changechange that is generational, pedagogical, and scholastic. Soul-searching is common to this phase of development. Our own soul-searching was initially prompted by one of us (CH) being privileged to

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Section: Medical Humanities As Expressive Of Elite Western Culturementioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Medical Humanities As Expressive Of Elite Western Culturementioning

confidence: 98%