Bibliographic Details
| Title: |
Plotting hope: Inverse stories and scalar reversals of a health crisis. |
| Authors: |
Fabrício, Branca Falabella1 brancaff@letras.ufrj.br, Borba, Rodrigo1 |
| Source: |
Language in Society. Nov2024, Vol. 53 Issue 5, p835-856. 22p. |
| Subject Terms: |
Zika virus, Epidemics, Ethnology, Medical care, Biomedical adhesives |
| Abstract: |
This article investigates the discursive dimensions of the Zika epidemic in Brazil. It focuses on the ways the sanitary crisis is talked about by mothers of babies born with microcephaly—a Zika-related syndrome. We examine the situated ways these mothers refuse the biomedical and bureaucratic scripts that are handed down to them by engaging with their new realities and fostering hope against the grain of bleak prognosis. To do so, we scrutinize a corpus that comprises media reports covering the health emergency and ethnographic interviews. Resorting to strategies such as inverse stories, timespace anchorage, and scalar reversals, mothers of Zika inventively plot against painful scripts while reimagining their kids' future (as well as theirs) in the present. They hope pragmatist hope without teleology. This chronotopic movement sheds light on how somber plots can be twisted through (re)scaling projects, thus forging hopeful actions. (Hope, narratives, scale, plot, epidemics, agency) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| Database: |
Education Research Complete |
