The “narrative turn” in biomedical discourses has dominated
twenty-first-century medical humanities,
pursuing the premise that narratives of illness,
including patient and literary narratives, contribute towards our understanding
of illness because they encourage us to reflect upon lived reality and even to
imagine events and experiences with which we may be grossly unfamiliar (Charon
et al.; Charon; Oyebode; Halpern; Altschuler). However, an emerging critical approach to the medical and health
humanities challenges the assumption that narrative is incontestably and
straightforwardly valuable for understanding illness. Following the work of Ahmed,
Keen, Bishop, Jurecic, Whitehead and Woods, and Whitehead, this article
suggests that narrative fiction may
not cultivate empathy for another
person, but may draw attention to the limitations of understanding another’s
experience by encouraging us to
look out for, and even to imagine, the multiple ways in which we experience the
world differently to others. With a focus on the experience of dementia-related diseases – including Alzheimer’s disease – in B.S. Johnson’s House Mother Normal, this
article shows that metafiction may
not help us to empathize with others so much as it may problematize our ability
to empathize in ways that are ethically valuable for an understanding of
subjectivity, illness, and experience.