Abstract
In this essay, I analyze two memoirs—Rafael Campo's The Poetry of Healing: A Doctor's Education in Empathy, Identity, and Desire and Abraham Verghese's My Own Country: A Doctor's Story of a Town and Its People in the Age of AIDS—which describe the effects of treating HIV/AIDS on each doctor's identity, on his desire for community and belonging, and on his identification and/or disidentification with the medical profession in the United States. My readings of Campo and Verghese revolve around three key terms provided by Campo's subtitle: identity, empathy, and desire. I shift the order of these terms in Campo's subtitle because I want to read identity, empathy, and desire in Campo and Verghese through and along with the theoretical “pragmatics” of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.
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Diedrich, L. AIDS and Its Treatments: Two Doctors' Narratives of Healing, Desire, and Belonging. J Med Humanit 26, 237–257 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-005-7699-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-005-7699-9