“Clinical Narratives” Scientific based or Hope based?

“ Cultural Studies of Biomedicine: An Agenda For Research.” From Good etc (1995) brought out a term “ clinical narratives” specifically refers to clinical context between patients and physicians which is very interesting concept for me. In my opinion, the physicians of course hold the power of accessing the newly treatment method and they are the person will determine the language of diagnosis, disease progression, treatment and outcome, and professional obligations to patients. Besides this seems almost ideal professional power, it is very challenging for me to think of that they work under the frame of international information and also try to fit their language within the local culture and still under the influence of the “political economy of hope”. Influenced by all these, doctors from different area no matter the economic development level occupy different “clinical narratives”.
When talking about the statistics in clinical narratives, the author gave an example of how a oncology doctor explain the chemotherapy of “Tamoxifen”. It seems to me that the physician try to convince the effect by scientific statistic numbers of increasing up to 15 percent of chance of cancer clean 5 years after surgery, but the decision making of the patients is totally unrational and based on “Hope”. These narratives are a mix of biomedicine and the cultural understanding, and they are specific for the American physicians and patients. The author did not do the research of other nations, so based on the international research result of this specific medicine, will the speech different from country to country. I assume my answer is yes.

The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa

When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...

Zionist hate mongering, the race/terror trope, and the Free Speech Union: Part 1

March 15, 2019. It was a day of terror. Unleashed by a white supremacist far-right terrorist. Driven by hate for brown people. Driven by Islamophobic hate. Earlier in the day, I had come across a hate-based hit piece targeting me, alongside other academics, the University of Auckland academic Professor Nicholas Rowe , Professor Richard Jackson at Otago University, Professor Kevin P Clements at Otago University, Dr. Rose Martin from University of Auckland and Dr. Nigel Parsons at Massey University. Titled, "More extremists in New Zealand Universities," the article threw in the labels "terror sympathisers" and "extremist views." Written by one David Cumin and hosted on the website of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, the article sought to create outrage that academics critical of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid are actually employed by universities in New Zealand. Figure 1: The web post written by David Cumin on the site of Israel Institute ...

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems wit...

Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

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