Abstract
If intense pain is “world-destroying,” as Elaine Scarry has argued, one of the ways nurses respond to that loss is by re-enacting the commonplace—both in practice and in writing—through daily, accumulating acts of care. Such care poses a critique of medicine’s emphasis on the exceptional moment and stresses forms of physical tending that are quotidian rather than heroic, ongoing rather than permanent or conclusive. I develop this view of care through the writings of nurses like Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, Cortney Davis and Joyce Renwick.
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Davis, R.L. The Practice of the Everyday in the Literature of Nursing. J Med Humanit 26, 7–21 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-005-1049-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-005-1049-9