Everyone's a Winner by Joel Best

Author:Joel Best
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press

Victims and Survivors

In Australia, just as in the United States, there is a social movement for the right to die (or “requested death”) that has had some success; in 1995, Australia's Northern Territory legalized physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. An analysis of press coverage following the law's passage found that the politician and the physician who were the movement's leading activists were portrayed as heroes, “rebels of their respective professions who had broken ranks with their colleagues.” Activists “constructed the terminally ill as victims in need of rescue” from painful, cruel deaths. We have already noted the ease with which activists can be deemed as heroic, and this case invokes familiar themes—courage in the face of opposition and protection of the vulnerable. But this case also involved another set of heroes: “heroic victims.” These were the terminally ill individuals who were willing to request death. This, too, involved bravery—the courage to risk social disapproval, to say nothing of being brave enough to face and accept death.24

Recall Furedi's warning that life in a risk society leaves no place for heroes: “Today, the fear of taking risks is creating a society that celebrates victimhood rather than heroism.”25 But contemporary culture does not draw a sharp line between victims and heroes; rather, it increasingly depicts victims as heroes. Suffering is recognized as an opportunity to behave heroically.

If the battlefield is a classic arena for displaying heroism, the sickbed can be understood to be a modern battlefield. We invoke military metaphors to talk about disease and treatment, particularly when the subject is cancer. Cancer is spoken of as an “enemy,” one that must be “fought,” “battled,” and sometimes “defeated”; it “invades” and “overpowers” the body's “defenses.” Physicians mount “campaigns” and politicians “declare war” against cancer.26 In this militarized terrain, it should be no surprise to discover heroes. In fact, when doctors manage to keep terminal patients alive a bit longer, they are described as having taken “heroic measures.”

Of course, the term victim has fallen out of favor when speaking of those who have cancer; they are increasingly referred to as “survivors” (yet another word with military connotations). Even when survival is temporary and death is understood to be inevitable, there are opportunities to display heroic behavior: “The script for heroic death begins with a depiction of the dying person struggling, sometimes against the wishes of others, sometimes against the inner self, to know the truth”; and “the acceptance of one's own death elicits considerable admiration, and is aspired to by many.”27 Terminally ill people who remain poised in the face of death, confront death realistically, continue working, and seek to leave their personal relationships in good order are valorized for behaving heroically. In other cases, those who care for the dying individual may decide that the best course is to conceal the diagnosis. Such caretakers bear the emotional burden of the impending death, and they, too, may be characterized as heroes for their sacrifice on behalf of others.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.