Trajectories and moral experiences of rare and chronic illness in biographies: A theoretical essay

Abstract

Our subject is a dialogue with six literary works, understood in the publishing market as biographies that consider first and second person narratives on the relationship with situations of chronic, rare or complex disease. As a theoretical essay, we try to build an argument: These biographies are public forms of people’s construction and presentation; they represent the possibility of assigning a place of visibility to moral experiences, of great public appeal, but which must be recognized in health care and training as political tools for reflection on practices. Thus, they become testimonies, providing less personal life histories and more biographical paths, with an interactionist dialogue among meanings, places, people, positions, stigma, right violations and discrimination.