Narratives of the body and history: Illness in judgement on the Soviet past

Abstract

This paper focuses on the narrative of a Latvian countrywoman. In so doing it explores the unstable relationship between history, memory and the body. In particular, it looks at the way in which certain historical events have come to be annexed to the body and are used to explain the development of psychological and mental illness. This account describes state-perpetrated violence, and connects individual ills to a shared history and collective suffering. My informant offered her life story as testimony to the violence and injustice of past experience. The attempt to channel political discontent by the generous provision of medical diagnostic categories is unsuccessful. Rather, bodily experience plays a central role as a yardstick against which the unreasonableness of history is judged.