Strange Encounters with Dead Selves: Medical Memoir, Apostrophe, and (Re)animating Subjectivity

This article focuses on three memoirs written by physicians who are specifically reflecting on their time in medical school to propose that the authors of these memoirs write not only to the reading audience, but also to their present and past selves. By addressing these former selves through the rhetorical figure of apostrophe, the authors write a new subjectivity into being. These memoirs serve as the material evidence of the formation what I call a bioaffective attachment, or, the way an individual physician's subjectivity is affectively attached to their own sense of self and to the larger healthcare industry.