Introduction

Medical humanities and care ethics, two interdisciplinary approaches to care, solicitude, and attention, have become increasingly important in academic institutions in recent years. Each is specific: medical humanities, as the name suggests, focuses more on the care of illness, encompassing a humanistic dimension (Fleury 2019). Narrative medicine (Charon 2006), for example, renews the way we listen to patients by drawing inspiration from literature. Care ethics, on the other hand, aligns more broadly with a politics of attention, interdependence, and vulnerability, challenging the liberal assumption of a perfectly autonomous individual (Tronto 1993; Brugère 2008; Paperman and Laugier 2005). Despite their differences, these two approaches are grounded on a particular conception of literature: medical humanities through listening to patients, informed by reading theories; care ethics, since In a Different Voice (Gilligan 1982), on the possibility of narratively constructing experience. The latter would make it possible to conceive of moral development according to a model that differs from the supposedly universal framework proposed by Lawrence Kohlberg (1958). While literature is the foundational point of these two worldviews, it is also foreclosed: doctors use it in the medical humanities; sociologists, philosophers, and political scientists use it in the ethics of care. Literature ends up being relegated, as is often the case, to the realm of the trivial—a form of entertainment or something less serious, something that anyone can pick up without prior knowledge. This use of literature often goes hand in hand with a problematic treatment of the notions of story and narrative, often conflated with the full range of literary possibilities, overlooking, for instance, poetry, essays and theater. Patients’ stories are often instrumentalized. How can we create links between medicine and literature by examining the ethical and practical issues raised by any interdisciplinary approach? How can we bridge disciplines that are very far apart and what questions should be asked of fields of study that remain highly compartmentalized? How, especially through research and inquiry into interdisciplinary methods, can we make patients’ voices heard, offer them spaces for expression and creation, and truly attend to their suffering and creativity? Such are the questions posed to the contributors of this issue. From different fields (sociology, medicine, literature, cinema, and philosophy) and in different modes (essays, scientific studies, creative writing and literary analysis), they propose answers which, although not exhaustive, weave links between different disciplines as they examine the capacity or incapacity of writing and reading to express and understand illness. The richness of this issue lies in the diversity of perspectives. Complex and sensitive topics are explored through complementary approaches, giving voice to both caregivers and those being cared for. The first three articles situate knowledge about illness, giving voice to understandings rooted in lived experience and the medical field, whether from patients or physicians. Furthermore, they explore the intersecting paths between these different forms of knowledge. Opening the issue with “La sociologue, la patiente, l’accompagnante,” Patricia Paperman considers the convergence of three positions in relation to care: as patient, caregiver for a friend, and sociologist whose work focuses on the notion of care. Through the echoes between these facets of personal experience, she reflects on the moral complexity of care situations. In “À bord de la van life,” Vincent Laliberté conceptualizes a new perspective on care through nomadic writing, derived from narrative medicine and therapeutic encounter. This approach considers the person being cared for beyond the experience of their illness, acknowledging their uniqueness and potential for becoming. The author illustrates this new way of understanding medicine through dialogue with Claude, a homeless man who dreams of taking off to South America …

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