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.

...I'll be back soon...

After all these months, I promise to myself that I will be back writing on this blog. I have just finished my fieldwork, at least the major part of it, and I will start analyzing and digging on my data. Hopefully I will be able to think while writing (and write while thinking) on this blog. (If you don't see me here, you can always go to my other blog in spanish (rafaawa.blogspot.com).

BTW, on a different note, I have just checked that my MA thesis (which is linked on the top right of this blog) has been viewed and donwloaded by many people and I am happy with it. I hope it helps others, and if you were one of those that read it you can send me an email with your comms to my email (rafagua(at)gmail.com).

Below are the statistics from the UBC page....

Statistics

Page displays

	When medicine cannot cure : dying children, palliative care, and the production of companionship
March 2010	58
April 2010	42
May 2010	42
June 2010	19
July 2010	8
August 2010	17
September 2010	8
total	194

File downloads

	ubc_2008_fall_wainer_rafael.pdf
March 2010	51
April 2010	21
May 2010	30
June 2010	5
July 2010	15
August 2010	10
September 2010	4
total	136

Top countries

countryCode	Views
United States of America	196
Canada	23
Ireland	4
Iran	4
Philippines	4
Saudi Arabia	4
China	3
Japan	3
Brazil	2
Spain	2

lets update this blog

i am going to add my comps list here. (i actually did it but as distinct pages on the right upper side)

Candidato

Ok, estimad@s tod@s, acabo de pasar el exámen de doctorado... Fue rápido y no tan doloroso. Asi que ahora me estoy convirtiendo en Candidato Doctoral o ABD (All but Dissertation)... En fín, contento con esto y quería compartirlo con uds. Ahora me voy a descansar un rato a esta pradera. Saludos.

written exam

in two days i'll have my written exam...
i hope all the light of the universe will guide my hands...

update

como veran no estoy actualizando nada este blog...
en unas semanas tengo que dar el examen...
tal vez despues meta todo lo que lei para el examen en este blog.
abrazos
rafa

as you may guess i am not updating this blog...
in a couple of weeks i will be sitting for my comps...
may be after i will add everything that i have been reading for this exam in this blog.
cheers
rafa

Alarcón 2003: Cuando me Muera Quiero que me Toquen Cumbia

Alarcón, Cristian. 2003. Cuando me Muera Quiero que me Toquen Cumbia. Buenos Aires: Norma.
In this work, Alarcón recreates a disturbing and raw image of the everyday violence, crime, solidarity, selfishness, and death in a shantytown in the north of Buenos Aires province that reaches high ethnographic quality. Although coming from journalism the author shows with incredible detail and excellent prose a non-fiction work that not only portrays but also engages with the life of shantytown people seeking for survival in the midst of one of the most unequal places in the country, where extreme wealth and extreme poverty reside side by side; but particularly the author connects with teenagers, the “pibes chorros”, robbing and putting their bodies at risk of police repression, and using all kinds of drugs to live and die in their own way. In this corner of the great Buenos Aires area a 17-year old was murdered and pestered by the police and at that time a myth started. This was Victor Vital, a Robin-Hood type of illegal who always robbed to the rich and helped to the people of his neighborhood. After his death, many people declared Vital helped them to avoid police bullets or did not die when all odds where against that. Vital became a hero and saint, but also a sign of the past, when no one was bothering or assaulting people of their own neighborhood, when there were “codes”. Now children and young teenagers are using drugs and guns and they lost the respect for the elders and their own neighborhood. Ultimately, this is not only a story of violence and death of poor and criminal teenagers but also of this neurotic society anesthetized by the extreme poverty (and extreme wealth) and who simultaneously produce its own teenagers as victims and victimizers, saints and devils.