Hopeless Cases: Queer Chronicities and Gertrude Stein's "Melanctha". Issue 3 (3rd March 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Freeman, Elizabeth
• Is Part Of: Journal of homosexuality. Volume 63:Issue 3(2016)
• Page Start: 329
• Page End: 348
• Publication Date: 2016-03-03
• Subjects: Bioethics -- case history -- eugenics -- Gertrude Stein -- LGBT health -- literary studies -- medical humanities -- narrative -- queer studies -- race; Homosexuality -- Periodicals; 306.766
• DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2016.1124690
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0091-8369

Abstract

ABSTRACT: For this contribution to the special issue on "Mapping Queer Bioethics, " the author offers a reflection on the nature of the literary, written word as the ethically fraught site of queer bioethics. By invoking the historical tendencies and tropes of the clinical case history alongside a seminal text by Gertrude Stein, the author at once asks if we should liberate a queer bioethics from biomedical discourse via mainstream narrative; or if we should see this strategy as unavoidably housed in narrative forms of storytelling because it echoes the tropes and stakes of the clinical, pathologized case history as regards queer sensibilities.