#pathographics

Written in German, published in German and English in the printed issue of form 274, Nov/Dec 2017.

In the world of medicine, both physical ailments and mental illnesses are often described using scientific and technical terminology; yet literary texts and images are frequently better at conveying the sufferer’s own inner perspective. Comics and graphic novels, for example, are an excellent way of communicating personal insights into liminal experiences both physiological and psychological. They have the potential to promote empathy and to facilitate dialogue between nursing staff, carers, and doctors on the one hand and patients and their families on the other. The team of the interdisciplinary research project Pathographics headed by Irmela Marei Krüger-Fürhoff, professor of German language and literature at the Freie Universität Berlin, is currently studying the aesthetic and political aspects of personal accounts of sickness and frailty in today’s comics and literature.

While Painless Parker gets a lot of flack for his Barnumesque tactics, he did make the point that dentistry was something poor folks should have access to.