Review of Metagnosis: Revelatory Narratives of Health and Identity

Abstract

Danielle Spencer’s book, “Metagnosis: Revelatory Narratives of Health and Identity,” does many things. It is a work of autotheory, putting Spencer’s own embodied narrative in constant conversation with the testimony of others along with a remarkably diverse set of critical and theoretical approaches. In the book, Spencer coins a new term, “metagnosis”, which occurs when one is newly diagnosed in adulthood with a lifelong condition. The book explores Spencer’s own metagnostic experience involving her eyesight along with chronicling the experiences of others to highlight the ways in which newfound knowledge of a diagnosis can in itself transform us. Born with strabismus—“misaligned eyes,” Spencer is practiced at negotiating the meaning of having a non-normative visual experience and presentation. For the most part, growing up with the condition and frequently subjected to medical attention because of it, Spencer remained largely unconcerned about whether or not she saw differently. But, as the book chronicles, in adulthood, after enduring subpar medical treatment and a series of frustrating surgeries, Spencer is additionally diagnosed with a different visual field condition, homonymous hemianopia, that was likely sustained in infancy, but which up until the diagnosis neither she nor her various doctors had detected. Spencer describes how she discovers in her orthoptist’s office that she can see only half of the visual world of each eye. This discovery leads to a deep ambivalence on Spencer’s part—which includes feelings of physical vulnerability, shame that the condition had gone unnoticed for so long, as well as relief for not having to suffer through the stigma and exclusion that may have come with the additional medical diagnosis in childhood. It also leads to a theoretical examination of the limited narrative and theoretical resources that avail us in trying to make sense of such revelatory experiences and the frustrating inexplicability that such transformative experiences can have for others. This intimate narrative approach democratizes theory. As Spencer says near the end of the book, WEB CONTENT ONLY