Performing identities in illness narrative: masculinity and multiple sclerosis

In a thrice-told tale, I analyze and compare the performance of identities in two illness narratives, men with multiple sclerosis whom I interviewed in the 1980s, and reinterpret them drawing on contemporary concepts of gender, disability, and performativity.

Abstract

Case studies have a valuable place in health research, including the increasingly popular illness narrative. In a thrice-told tale, I analyze and compare the performance of identities in two illness narratives, men with multiple sclerosis whom I interviewed in the 1980s. I include myself as a figure in the construction of the narratives, as audience for their performance, and I reinterpret them drawing on contemporary concepts of gender, disability, and performativity. Initially inspired theoretically by Goffman, the re-analysis locates the men in social structural contexts, drawing on Bourdieu’s work on class and the body’s relationship to social space.