The Machine-Body as Contested Metaphor in Clinical Care

• Cheryl Mattingly ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Southern California

     University of Southern California

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture, ISSN 0016-6928, ISSN-e 2160-0228, Vol. 44, Nº. 3, 2011 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Binocular Vision: Narrative and Metaphor in Medicine), págs. 363-380
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • There has been far more attention to narrative than to metaphor among scholars looking at clinical care. In this article, I consider the relationship between metaphor and narrative in a contested confrontation between family members and clinicians over a do-not-resuscitate decision. Drawing upon a key metaphor in biomedicine, the body as machine, I consider its canonical uses but also its limits and the way it is contested, refuted, and even “poached” by one family in its battle with clinicians. I also explore the relationship between metaphor and narrative as I consider the divergence of framing between clinicians and family as connected to the way the machine-body metaphor is embedded within different and perhaps even incommensurable narrative horizons