The Biomedical Body and Everyday Life in Quebec

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Laforest, Daniel

• SSHRC Awarded IG 2017: This project focuses on the representations of health and the biomedical body in post-1960s Anglo-Canada and Franco-Québec literatures. It is interested in the representation of urban middle-classes and the ways in which the notion of responsibility towards health informs the literary self. It possesses a resolutely interdisciplinary dimension because its results as well as part of its methodology will intersect with the field of health humanities. With the rapidly growing, yet widely different problems of public health management in Canada, the personal relation to one's body and health in light of the often-conflicting rhythms of urban life has become crucial. The relative sobriety and calculations required by health regimens, by the physical and mental declines of old age, by the "accidents" that radically alter one's identity, or by the unequal rhythms and lifespan of organs along with the possibility of their transplant, quickly prove to be incompatible with the subjective flourishing of the ideal of the "good life" that dominates our images of citizenship. Questions include: How do stories incorporate, preserve and communicate fatal illnesses not as objects, but rather as a set of hints or traces throughout generational time? In what ways are the time and the economy of everyday urban life organized around the time dictated by the biomedical body? While health conditions shape the idea of one's self and belonging, how do literary narratives integrate and express such crucial conditions of contemporary life? Ultimately, what are the implications for literature itself?

• Date created

  2016-09-27

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Health Narratives
  • Storytelling
  • SSHRC
  • Urban Middle-Class
  • Canada
  • Medical Experiences
  • Medicine
  • Cultural Studies
  • Modern Languages
  • Literary Self
  • Narratives
  • French Canadian
  • Public Health
  • Québécoise
  • Arts and Culture
  • Narration
  • Insight Grant
  • 1960-2017
  • Health Humanities
  • Biomedical
  • Health and Citizenship
  • Literature
  • IG
  • Quebec
  • Body
  • Anglo Canadian
  • English Canadian
  • Narrative
  • Ethics
  • Successful Grant
  • Responsibility and Health
  • 2017
  • Canada
  • Québec

• Type of Item

  Research Material

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R33B5WM1F

• License

  © Laforest, Daniel. All rights reserved other than by permission. This document embargoed to those without UAlberta CCID until 2025.