Volume V Special Issue III August 2025

Name of Author : Mr. Ankit Hiraji Banpurkar

Title of the paper : Illness Writing in the Age of Digitization A Radical Weapon to Resist the Medical Gaze

Abstract: In the age of digitization and sophisticated medical technologies, the act of writing illness narratives reclaims a powerful sense of agency for patients. As medical diagnosis increasingly relies on the double gaze that of both the doctor and the machine the patients subjective experience often becomes secondary to digital signs, symbols, and statistical data. This technoclinical gaze tends to depersonalize illness, reducing the individual to a set of measurable parameters. However, through narrative writing, patients can resist this abstraction and reassert their embodied, lived experiences. Illness narratives become acts of selfdefinition and coherence, allowing patients to reframe their suffering, articulate emotional realities, and regain ownership of their stories beyond the mechanized language of medicine. In this context, narrative becomes both a therapeutic and political tool, challenging the dominance of clinical objectivity and restoring the human dimension to the experience of illness.

Keywords : Illness Narrative, Double Gaze, Digitization, Medical Gaze, Patient Agency, Narrative Coherence

DOI :

Page Number : 138-140