engleski

Homo Narrans and the "Indescribability" of the Post-Covid Syndrome: Fear, Pain And Convalescents in Croatia

Since the start of the pandemic Croatian media sporadically reported testimonies of mainly public figures who have survived the coronavirus infection. Their reports on the illness were the first publicly available accounts of the experience, while most people hadn’t yet encountered it. The symptoms of the disease which was experientially unknown, often “indescribable” and “inconceivable” to the majority, gained its narrative stronghold, its paradigmatic examples and “constructed” expectations, fostered and directed fears. Over the course of time the public became familiar with the disease’s many symptoms and it became experientially recognizable, its symptoms, specific sensations and course became more available to language. As there exists an increasing number of people who recovered from the infection, the story of its course is on the one hand differentiated through many diverse experiences (from the mild, barely noticeable changes to dramatic and fatal outcomes), and on the other universalized as an illness which has but one rule - there are no rules. This narrative makes it “frightening”, but also gives one hope that her experiences will not be that “terrible”. Only recently in the media and everyday communication narrative reports and testimonies of the so-called long COVID or post-COVID syndrome started appearing. This syndrome is recorded in people with the history of severe illness, but also in those with mild symptoms. Media also report on research about the consequences of the illness. It is certain that the pandemic, even once it is over, will leave behind a large number of people with impaired health, a changed perception of self, one’s strength, life energy, possibilities, etc. Presently, this syndrome is mainly a medical “unknown”. In everyday communication it is narratively shaped into a string of personal narratives about symptoms and is described, both among medical experts and convalescents, as an “indescribable”, “surreal”, “bizarre”, “frightening” experience, an experience of long duration, unpredictable course, unknown causes, that evades language and the hitherto familiar symptomatology and descriptions of pain, weakness or suffering. The goal of this presentation is the (auto)ethnographic analysis of the language used to communicate the so-called long COVID or post-COVID syndrome, its cultural meanings reflected in the communication of patients and medical doctors, the narratological specificities of the stories relating the experience of the syndrome that causes physical and mental pain and suffering, as well as its social consequences.

COVID-19 ; post-COVID ; pain ; fear

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