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Title: Illness and Culture in the Postmodern Age by David B. Morris ISBN: 0-520-22689-5 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 07 August, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (2 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: More Postmodern Hubris
Comment: In this self-important, boringly long, intellectually dishonest solipistic monologue, Morris manages to parade a litany of postmodern politically correct sacred cows. However, his central thesis that western medicine distinguishes disease as objective and illness as subjective is patently wrong as recourse to any medical dictionary will reveal. This is just the first of his outright disinformation, exaggerations, and many false strawmen that he creates in nothing less than a frontal assault on western medicine that is full of ill-will and a transparent invitation for postmodern gurus to take over as self-appointed high priests of a deconstructed medicine. Morris kindly allows a small role for a properly humbled and subservient science and the remaining carcass of medicine as we know it. this is an anti-science, anti-medicine, anti-western, anit-rational diatribe that is supposedly an argument for a new biocultural theory to supplant western medicine. It is rambling, tangential, and plays fast and loose with facts. It is another chapter in the effort of postmodernists to constuct a worldview in which the mantra is "culture uber alles," not by any radional argument but by simple repetitive assertion intermixed with false strawmen in and effort to deceptively prop up their nihilism while viciously deconstructing anything that gets in the way of their imperialistic jihad against anything that is western or caucasian (or at least male caucasian). This book confirms my worst fears about postmodernism. It will appeal to that cadre of perpetual toddlers who masquerade as quasi-intellectuals but are intent on destroying culture by declaring everything as culture and political, and thus returning us to the primeval jungle. Unfortunately it may appeal also to those who are vulnerable to the chic attack of postmodernists. However, any informed critique will reveal that debunking Morris is so easy that it is not even sport. It is like shooting fish in a barrel -- red herrings to be exact. If anyone buys this book they should carefully examine the facts and argument that Morris makes, but I would not recommend that anyone buy it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Illness and Culture in the Postmodern Age
Comment: Illness and Culture in the Postmodern Age
Reviewer: Veronica S. Albin from Houston, TX USA
I used Illness and Culture in the Postmodern Age for the first time this semester as a text book for Spanish 307 (The Language and Culture of Medicine and Health Care) at Rice University in Houston, TX. Most of the students enrolled in this advanced Spanish course are juniors and seniors headed for the top medical schools in the country.
My students' response to the book was overwhelmingly positive. Their one complaint about it was that sometimes Morris required pages and pages to make a point and that by the time the point was made, the reader was fairly tired. Nonetheless, they unanimously labeled it as one of the most provocative books they had ever read, and that by having read it, they were now able to see the negative side of the biomedical model and the positive side of a biocultural model.
Illness and Culture proved to be so rich in topics that all 35 students found not one but several topics that were of personal interest to them. Student athletes, for example, most of them headed to Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, or to Sports Medicine, found the section on how the American fixation on sports and exercise backfired and instead of improving health, brought more medical problems to our society (ACL tears, stress fractures, tennis elbow, heat stroke, etc.) Students who have an interest in art were fascinated by the connections Morris establishes to the experience of illness. Those interested in literature found the sections on narrative outstanding. The chapter on suffering truly moved students in light of the recent events of September 11 and got them thinking about the suffering of others, not just our own. Students interested in linguistics and neuroscience were fascinated by Morris' chapter on the obscene and Tourette's syndrome. And, of course, the threat of bioterrorism was in everyone's mind and Morris' treatment of the subject proved to be highly stimulating.
I start the course by telling my students that they need to write smart and different med school application essays in order to stand out. When I first ask them what they are going to write about, their answers are thoroughly predictable: they love medicine, love humankind, they believe in altruism, they want to study medicine because as good Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc., they want to relieve suffering.
After reading Illness and Culture, my students no longer have good answers to my "what are you going to write about" question, for they realize that there are very few answers to most of Morris' provocative questions... and perhaps there are none. Instead they have a myriad intriguing thoughts and questions buzzing through their minds. And intriguing thoughts, without a doubt, are much better stimulants than boilerplate answers for writing intelligent med school application essays. Questions, in fact, make us better thinkers, they make us participate in human affairs. Questions stop us from being mere bystanders in this difficult postmodern world of ours. Trying to solve what seem to be paradoxes, dilemmas, inconsistencies is, after all, what makes us human.
In short, David B. Morris has helped open the eyes of 35 extremely bright students at one of our country's top universities this term, and I plan to keep on using his book in the years to come.
Vero Albin
Hispanic and Classical Studies
Rice University
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Title: Narrative and the Cultural Construction of Illness and Healing by Cheryl Mattingly, Linda C. Garro ISBN: 0520218256 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 04 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics by Rita Charon, Martha Montello ISBN: 0415928389 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 15 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics by Arthur W. Frank ISBN: 0226259935 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: March, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition by Arthur M.D. Kleinman ISBN: 0465032044 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: September, 1989 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: The Culture of Pain by David B. Morris ISBN: 0520082761 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: April, 1993 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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