The Healing Corridor : A Critical Phenomenology of Severe Illness, Impairment and Care in Java

Abstract

This dissertation explores subjective accounts among Javanese of the experience of severe illness (namely, osteosarcoma and associated bodily impairment) and care. This thesis argues that the biomedical diagnosis and treatment of illness and disability that has dominated health care for the past few centuries cannot fully treat many kinds of illness. This thesis takes illness narratives as its lens to examine ideas of self and personhood in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia. In doing so, the ethnographic research shows that the social structures that construct individuals and social identities through modern notions of body care are complemented by Javanese approaches marked by mysticism and spiritualism. The analysis explores affect as a significant element in cultural meaning and value complementing biomedical treatment and healing. It is shown that practices of spiritual cultivation in particular build up the Javanese ideal of personhood and holistic healing patterns.

Within the special region of Yogyakarta, the influence of the aristocracy, their values, practices and beliefs are still meaningful in local society and are taken to be a powerful tie uniting people with the cosmic order. The embodied mysticality enacted through not only the religion of Islam but also the Yogyakarta Kraton's existence colours the way Javanese individuals make sense of their fate and inspiration. In the Javanese view of life God elevates human batin (spiritual selves or lives) above lahir (physical lives), signifying the importance of caring for the spirit as well as the body. This study shows how illness and disability are narrated and the emotional context in which Javanese repress their emotions and conceal turmoil through the idioms of syukur (acknowledge blessing) and nrimo (acceptance).

This study contributes to a broader understanding of experiences of embodiment, inclusion and personhood by illuminating people's agentive submission to relations of deprivation and disability. By focusing on how people think and feel about chronic illness, impairment and care, it is suggested that flows of affect that circulate widely in the clinic and everyday life demonstrate that Javanese seek to combine spiritual, moral and physical care in a balance. The sick and disabled poor have practices and ways of responding to trauma and are not powerless in the matrix of power and control that regularly targets and disempowers them.