Narrative Ethics, Authentic Integrity, and an Intrapersonal Medical Encounter in David Foster Wallace’s “Luckily the Account Representative Knew CPR”
In Wallace’s short story “Luckily the Account Representative Knew CPR,” a vice president (VP) suffers cardiac arrest. As an account representative (AR) administers CPR, he discovers his own impersonality mirrored back to him by the VP—a disturbing vision of himself that the AR wishes to escape. Beca...
| Published in: | Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
2015
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| In: |
Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics
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| Further subjects: | B
Authenticity
B Narrative Ethics B authentic integrity B David Foster Wallace B Integrity |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In Wallace’s short story “Luckily the Account Representative Knew CPR,” a vice president (VP) suffers cardiac arrest. As an account representative (AR) administers CPR, he discovers his own impersonality mirrored back to him by the VP—a disturbing vision of himself that the AR wishes to escape. Because modern moral theories would have the AR respond impersonally to the VP, those theories would only exacerbate his existential predicament. In contrast, by regarding the AR’s act as one that he, in particular, should perform, narrative ethics can discern a resolution for his predicament: because the AR still values his diminished capacities for care and spontaneity, this situation offers him an opportunity to revive those former traits. Doing so would give him greater authentic integrity, or narrative continuity with the most important aspects of his past. Authentic integrity can serve narrative ethics as a helpful starting point for understanding how the life stories of patients, clinicians, and others might appropriately unfold. |
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| ISSN: | 1469-2147 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0963180114000346 |