The Illness Community: Uses of Community in Australian Health Services, Support Resources and Illness Memoir

Abstract

In Australia, as in the West more widely, the illness memoir has emerged as a burgeoning sub-genre in the field of published autobiography and nonfictional literature as more people are living with and surviving the complicated, traumatic experience of diseases such as cancer. In recent years these narratives have drawn much discussion from scholars in the medical humanities for the various ways in which they engage with disease not so much in pathological or diagnostic terms, but in terms of its effects on concepts of self, personhood and the social body. Not surprisingly, many illness narratives pay attention to the personalised story of illness and its transformative effects for the writer/speaker. Yet narratives that grapple with illness and health as issues about community articulate a different, more outward-directed set of concerns than do the narratives that focus primarily on individual transformation. Drawing on Australian examples of health services, support resources and illness memoir, this chapter will explore some of the ways in which the idea of ‘community’ is conceived and utilized in relation to illness and health.