‘A Completely Different Person’: Embodied Dialectics and Biographical Disruption After Stroke

Abstract

Stroke is a leading cause of complex disability, with many survivors experiencing mobility, cognitive and/or speech and language impairment. This paper explores the relationship between biographical disruption and body studies through experiences of informal care in stroke. Drawing on narratives from 41 interviews with stroke survivors and their wider support network, we use Michael Bury's concept of ‘biographical disruption’ alongside body studies theorists to construct a framework to understand the role of embodiment within biographical disruption. We draw on Victoria Cluley and colleagues' concept of ‘biographical dialectics’ to reveal, through our data, an ‘embodied dialectics’, where past and present embodied experiences of chronic illness exist in a productive tension. We identify three distinct but interlinking aspects: (i) contradictions between past, present and future embodied understandings are generative, leading individuals to produce new forms of embodied knowledge; (ii) tensions create motion, ensuring ongoing dialectical processes that generate creative adaptations and conversations in relation to informal care and embodied practices post-stroke and (iii) these processes are ongoing as the competing demands of autonomy and dependence continue to generate new challenges. In doing so, we highlight the roles of socio-cultural practices and expectations in shaping individual and collective embodied understandings of illness and subsequent disruption.