196 p., Argues that cultural and literary expressions of illness, suffering, and subjectivity in the postcolonial context are always in dialogue with seemingly external discourses and practices of health. Thus, through sustained analyses of historical, biomedical and sociocultural currents in the context of eight Francophone novels from 1968 to 2003, the book advances a new theory of critical conditions. These critical conditions represent the conjunction of bodily, psychic, and textual states that defy conventional definitions of health and well-being.
