Colbeck M. The Language and Imagery of Coma and Brain Injury: Representations in Literature, Film and Media

Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. — 225 p.What occurs within coma? What does the coma patient experience? How does the patient perceive the world outside of coma, if at all?
The simple answer to these questions is that we don’t know. Yet the sheer volume of literary and media texts would have us believe that we do. This book examines representations of coma and brain injury across a range of texts, exploring common tropes and linguistic devices used to portray this medical condition and which help shape universal mythologies of coma. It looks at how these texts represent, or fail to represent, long-term brain injury, drawing on narratives of coma survivors that have been produced and curated through writing groups that the author has run over the last 7 years.
Discussing a diverse range of cultural works, including novels by Irvine Welsh, Stephen King, Tom McCarthy and Douglas Coupland, as well as film and media texts such as The Sopranos, Kill Bill, Coma and The Walking Dead, this study provides an explanation for our fascination with coma. With a proliferation of overly positive stories of survival in the media and in literature, this book explores the potential impact these have upon our own understanding of coma and its victims.Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Contextualizing coma and brain injury: A linguistic, cultural and medical history
Coma, trauma and the exilic self
Coma and the katabatic archetype
Selfhood and the post-coma condition
Coma, brain injury and lived experience
Metaphor and narrative prosthesis
Notes
Bibliography
Index