3.27.2006
Picturing Health and Illness (History and Theory of the Body)
Title
Gilman, Sander. Picturing Health and Illness: Images of Identity and Difference. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Field
History and Theory of the Body
Summary
Sander Gilman considers the project of this book to consider the images of health and illness, so often ignored in the writing of the history of medicine, particularly taking note of the ways in which health is figured as beauty and illness is figured as ugliness. He begins by noting the four major roles of visual images for historians of medicine - the first is the use of images as illustrative of illness. These images assume a transparency that is manipulative - "The assumption is that the narrative is complete rather than partial (as all narratives must be) and that the images provide 'representative' or 'unmediated access to the material world of the narrative." (15) The second is closely linked to the first, except it relies upon the photograph as "a 'real' window into realities of the past." (ibid) "The third model for the use of images stresses the artistic medium itself and the internal iconographic tradition of the work of art." (16) "The fourth way of employing visual materials in the writing of the history of medicine is to make the image itself the subject of the analysis of cultural fantasies of health, disease, and the body." (18) "What has heretofore been avoided is the idea of multiple, simultaneous meanings, the very ambiguity that is inherent to visual images, no matter what their venue." (19) In the second chapter, Gilman looks at images produced in the four ways described above that depict the mentally ill as a means of identifying from the outside (in terms of beauty or ugliness) what is pathological on the inside (sane or insane). "All [representations of the mentally ill in this chapter] control the images and the range of interpretation, whether those limits are contextualized in the discussion of the images or present in the very structure of the image itself. Yet each representation provides the viewer with multiple, simultaneous meanings that need to be controlled just as much as does the anxiety about identifying oneself with the image of the mad. As we picture health and illness, we bring to the images an entire arsenal of aesthetic associations, and we see the world in terms of beauty and ugliness. The associations provide a means of placing ourselves as observers not only of these images but of our own bodies, bodies inherently in danger of illness." (50) The next chapter furthers this argument, maintaining that not only is the diseased ugly, but the ugly is diseased. Gilman furthers this argument with discussions of racial inferiority base on appearance, etc. "The healthy is the beautiful, is the erotic, is the good, for it leads to the preservation and continuation of the collective. This is the norm against which the deviant is to be measured. The deviant is ill and is therefore ugly and evil...The ugliness of the deviant may be overtly evident upon first glance, may appear over time, or may be evident only to the 'trained eye' of the physician/aesthetician...there are no intermediate or transitional stages, only masks that are lifted to reveal the antithesis of the healthy."(66) The next chapter starts the close readings, more specific than the over all theme posited in the first three chapters. This chapter is on the Phantom of the Opera and his lack of a nose, particularly ugly/unhealthy as its mark of syphilitic body. He also discusses the advent of plastic surgery, especially in relation to the desire to erase racial difference as ugliness (ie the Jewish nose).
The next chapter is a reading of Mark Twain's writing on Jews and Anti-Semiticism. While Twain does locate the cause of Jewish ugliness/illness not upon race or space but upon oppression, he does transform this rhetoric of physical illnes into "the rhetoric about psychological predisposition...Twain sees the diseases of the Jews as markers for the Jews' difference, but also for the difference which they (as individuals who have experienced death and disease in their own world) see in themselves. An yet, in his own estimation, he is not as 'ill' as the Jews and that redeems him."(114) The last chapter examines several public health posters on AIDS. "All of these aestheticized images attempt to simplify the lived complexity of disease through the use of highly constructed visual images." (115) He notes that the ill/ugly body is very rarely used in these posters. "The setting or some other external sign, rather than the ill person's body, is used to evoke the disease."(148) "Rarely is the figure of Death as an abstraction replaced by representations (even symbolic representations) of a dead body...The 'beautiful' remains the transnational sign for the healthy and the 'ugly' is banished from this world of images. Yet hidden within the images of the beautiful is the potential for death. Death comes to be limited as the beautiful body moves to its antithesis without the process of dying. Death itself comes to be aestheticized. All thse images are images not of education, but of control." (162) Gilman concludes not by giving any definite answers and asserting that his project was provacative and incomplete in the selective nature of the images he chooses to examine. He provocatively gestures to smell as opposed to sight as the sense through which we might be able to better confront the constructedness of the images we consume of illness to reassure ourselves of our own bodily integrity and the abeyance of death. "Disease is not solely seen in the Other; tis 'stench' fills our nostrils and floods our imagination. It does not respect the nice, clean boundary that we have attributed to the sense of sight." (178)
Keywords
Health, Illness, Representation, Image, Beauty, Ugliness, Aesthetic
Other Thoughts
"The anxieties about illness are replaced by control over the image. As we shall see in this study, the images can seem to be controlled, while the 'illnesses' constructed seem always to be beyond control. This anxiety is played out in the world of representations for historians and for readers, as it is sager and more controlled that the world of illness, real or imagined. To do so it is necessary to control the multiple, simultaneous meanings of visual representations and to focus on a seemingly concrete, single interpretation. This book will attempt to open up a set of images that represent health and illness and show how the problem of simultaneity complicates the interprestation of such images." (32)
"Sexuality and the aesthetic are closely linked to the question of the beautiful, the truly healthy. While there are some limitations to the notion of the beautiful...in general, our desire is to limit the diseased to the world of the ugly. The ugly is anti-erotic rather than merely unaesthetic. It is denied the ability to reproduce." (92)
"Here we have a very modern project - the telling of multiple tales about a single object- that reveals some of the permanence of the anxieties of our age in regard to the body and to the memory of the body from the past. While we recognize the potential for such multiple tales, we still struggle to find the one that is 'true.' For flux is disturbing, permanence reassuring, even in the telling of stories. The ultimate flux that is combated in our telling of stories is the flux experienced in our sensing the transience of our lives and bodies. This is the reason we compulsively tell tales about health and illness; it is in these tales that we come closest to articulating the anxieties we have about our own mortality. These tales are as much present in the culture of medicine as in that of art." (175)
Gilman, Sander. Picturing Health and Illness: Images of Identity and Difference. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Field
History and Theory of the Body
Summary
Sander Gilman considers the project of this book to consider the images of health and illness, so often ignored in the writing of the history of medicine, particularly taking note of the ways in which health is figured as beauty and illness is figured as ugliness. He begins by noting the four major roles of visual images for historians of medicine - the first is the use of images as illustrative of illness. These images assume a transparency that is manipulative - "The assumption is that the narrative is complete rather than partial (as all narratives must be) and that the images provide 'representative' or 'unmediated access to the material world of the narrative." (15) The second is closely linked to the first, except it relies upon the photograph as "a 'real' window into realities of the past." (ibid) "The third model for the use of images stresses the artistic medium itself and the internal iconographic tradition of the work of art." (16) "The fourth way of employing visual materials in the writing of the history of medicine is to make the image itself the subject of the analysis of cultural fantasies of health, disease, and the body." (18) "What has heretofore been avoided is the idea of multiple, simultaneous meanings, the very ambiguity that is inherent to visual images, no matter what their venue." (19) In the second chapter, Gilman looks at images produced in the four ways described above that depict the mentally ill as a means of identifying from the outside (in terms of beauty or ugliness) what is pathological on the inside (sane or insane). "All [representations of the mentally ill in this chapter] control the images and the range of interpretation, whether those limits are contextualized in the discussion of the images or present in the very structure of the image itself. Yet each representation provides the viewer with multiple, simultaneous meanings that need to be controlled just as much as does the anxiety about identifying oneself with the image of the mad. As we picture health and illness, we bring to the images an entire arsenal of aesthetic associations, and we see the world in terms of beauty and ugliness. The associations provide a means of placing ourselves as observers not only of these images but of our own bodies, bodies inherently in danger of illness." (50) The next chapter furthers this argument, maintaining that not only is the diseased ugly, but the ugly is diseased. Gilman furthers this argument with discussions of racial inferiority base on appearance, etc. "The healthy is the beautiful, is the erotic, is the good, for it leads to the preservation and continuation of the collective. This is the norm against which the deviant is to be measured. The deviant is ill and is therefore ugly and evil...The ugliness of the deviant may be overtly evident upon first glance, may appear over time, or may be evident only to the 'trained eye' of the physician/aesthetician...there are no intermediate or transitional stages, only masks that are lifted to reveal the antithesis of the healthy."(66) The next chapter starts the close readings, more specific than the over all theme posited in the first three chapters. This chapter is on the Phantom of the Opera and his lack of a nose, particularly ugly/unhealthy as its mark of syphilitic body. He also discusses the advent of plastic surgery, especially in relation to the desire to erase racial difference as ugliness (ie the Jewish nose).
The next chapter is a reading of Mark Twain's writing on Jews and Anti-Semiticism. While Twain does locate the cause of Jewish ugliness/illness not upon race or space but upon oppression, he does transform this rhetoric of physical illnes into "the rhetoric about psychological predisposition...Twain sees the diseases of the Jews as markers for the Jews' difference, but also for the difference which they (as individuals who have experienced death and disease in their own world) see in themselves. An yet, in his own estimation, he is not as 'ill' as the Jews and that redeems him."(114) The last chapter examines several public health posters on AIDS. "All of these aestheticized images attempt to simplify the lived complexity of disease through the use of highly constructed visual images." (115) He notes that the ill/ugly body is very rarely used in these posters. "The setting or some other external sign, rather than the ill person's body, is used to evoke the disease."(148) "Rarely is the figure of Death as an abstraction replaced by representations (even symbolic representations) of a dead body...The 'beautiful' remains the transnational sign for the healthy and the 'ugly' is banished from this world of images. Yet hidden within the images of the beautiful is the potential for death. Death comes to be limited as the beautiful body moves to its antithesis without the process of dying. Death itself comes to be aestheticized. All thse images are images not of education, but of control." (162) Gilman concludes not by giving any definite answers and asserting that his project was provacative and incomplete in the selective nature of the images he chooses to examine. He provocatively gestures to smell as opposed to sight as the sense through which we might be able to better confront the constructedness of the images we consume of illness to reassure ourselves of our own bodily integrity and the abeyance of death. "Disease is not solely seen in the Other; tis 'stench' fills our nostrils and floods our imagination. It does not respect the nice, clean boundary that we have attributed to the sense of sight." (178)
Keywords
Health, Illness, Representation, Image, Beauty, Ugliness, Aesthetic
Other Thoughts
"The anxieties about illness are replaced by control over the image. As we shall see in this study, the images can seem to be controlled, while the 'illnesses' constructed seem always to be beyond control. This anxiety is played out in the world of representations for historians and for readers, as it is sager and more controlled that the world of illness, real or imagined. To do so it is necessary to control the multiple, simultaneous meanings of visual representations and to focus on a seemingly concrete, single interpretation. This book will attempt to open up a set of images that represent health and illness and show how the problem of simultaneity complicates the interprestation of such images." (32)
"Sexuality and the aesthetic are closely linked to the question of the beautiful, the truly healthy. While there are some limitations to the notion of the beautiful...in general, our desire is to limit the diseased to the world of the ugly. The ugly is anti-erotic rather than merely unaesthetic. It is denied the ability to reproduce." (92)
"Here we have a very modern project - the telling of multiple tales about a single object- that reveals some of the permanence of the anxieties of our age in regard to the body and to the memory of the body from the past. While we recognize the potential for such multiple tales, we still struggle to find the one that is 'true.' For flux is disturbing, permanence reassuring, even in the telling of stories. The ultimate flux that is combated in our telling of stories is the flux experienced in our sensing the transience of our lives and bodies. This is the reason we compulsively tell tales about health and illness; it is in these tales that we come closest to articulating the anxieties we have about our own mortality. These tales are as much present in the culture of medicine as in that of art." (175)
# posted by SMRT : 5:52 PM
