Thinking on Myra Bluebond-Langner

My supervisor told me on our last meeting "take a look at what MBL did, make a review, check what she found, explicitly say 'this is what MBL found, this is what so far I've found, these are the things she didn't say anything about it'. Start with this and then you'll have a more clear idea of what are you going to do with your thesis".

So here I am, re-reading MBL and finding similarities and differences. And here is something I've just written on my review:

Bluebong-Langner, Myra. 1989. Worlds of Dying Children and Their Well Siblings. Death Studies, 13(1): 1-16.

MBL starts this paper talking about the feelings the rest of the family members have, especially the well siblings, in relation to the terminally ill children. Of course, they “do not look forward to permanent disability or to death” (1). Therefore, she says, “So begins for the family, for each and every member of that family, a cycle of feelings that includes anxiety, guilt, neglect, denial, anger, and depression” (1). And, this is precisely what I want to look at: How are these feelings produced? What lies behind and below these feelings? How does the end of children’s lives affect everyone not only in terms of feelings and rational choices/thinking but also in terms of physical and corporeal affect amongst bodies? Whit this I am not so interested in the codification of these “feelings” in “anxiety”, “guilt”, “neglect”, etc. but in the actions these affects propel.