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Abstract :
[en] Since the rise of the interdisciplinary field of health humanities at the turn of the century, patients’ narratives have been more and more considered as a source of knowledge about the subjective dimension of mental illness. Such illness narratives have been traditionally published as autobiographies and memoirs, namely often solicited literary works with institutional dimensions, which makes their educational and therapeutic value questionable (Radden and Varga 2013, 100; Franssen 2020, 440). In the Digital Age, illness narratives have also been massively posted on blogs. Illness blogs have drawn scholarly attention, especially because illness blogging is unsolicited and interactive (visitors can comment on narratives), and has a uniquely emotional style (Heilferty 2009, 1540; Paal 2010, 54). For these reasons, their value is not necessarily literary but social since they create ‘safe’ spaces for expression and communities of sufferers, relatives, and strangers who, together, contribute to shaping our understanding of illness. In this presentation, I will analyze exemplary schizophrenia narratives from personal blogs (Pat Deegan, Blogschizo, Ta Gueule Boris, and Overcoming Schizophrenia) and blogs managed by associations (Pulse and Mind). Schizophrenia is still a medically and culturally misunderstood mental illness that is subject to stigmatization (Granger and Naudin 2022). Building on insights from life writing studies (Rak 2005; Smith and Watson 2014), rhetorical narratology (Phelan 2017; 2022), and the rhetoric of health and medicine (Ehrenfeld 2018), I will examine the rhetorical functions of schizophrenia blogs by focusing on how their narratives are constructed (the narrative elements and affects) and presented (the distinctive characteristics and the paratext of the sites) to address their audiences. In doing so, while adopting a rhetorical-ecological approach, I will show how blogs contribute to destigmatization and illustrate how knowledge about schizophrenia is produced, that is by multiple actors and agencies, not only psychiatrists but also patients and others.
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