Listening Well: Toward a Hermeneutics of Humility within Narrative Humanism
Saturday, October 14, 2023
1:15 PM – 2:30 PM ET
Location: Essex C (Fourth Floor)
In The Limits of Critique, Rita Felski challenges the supremacy of “suspicious reading,” noting that such a tactic often casts critics as the “heroic detective,” a figure who, as if from on high, uncovers clandestine secrets and parcels out blame. Felski’s approach echoes that of Eve Sedgwick who makes a similar argument in “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading.” Sedgwick, however, centers her analogy in medical terminology (the critic as surgeon, anesthesiologist, master inoculator), arguing that these self-images become particularly harmful when they engender a sense of righteous dominance. While Felski and Sedgwick’s invocation has received positive reception within literary studies, scholars have not yet explored the implications of such a practice within the health humanities. In this paper, I place Felski and Segwick’s correctives in conversation with narrative humanism, noting that a hermeneutic of suspicion may undermine the goals of narrative medicine, especially as scholars attempt to foster narrative competence and cultural humility among medical professionals. As an alternative, I outline a hermeneutic of humility, connecting this hermeneutic to three important aspects of narrative medicine: 1. A decentralization of actant as the arbiter of meaning, 2. an emphasis on careful listening before diagnosis, and 3. a deep distrust of simple narratives and easy answers. As narrative medicine faculty seek to emphasize a humanistic approach to medicine, literary intervention filtered through a hermeneutic of humility could prove a fruitful facilitative conduit, equipping medical professionals to humbly engage with and patiently untangle the complex, non-linear narrative lives of the patients they serve.