Paper short abstract:

This paper argues for a form of ethnographic writing that does not resort to narrations of patient history or diagnosis. It proposes opacity as a strategy that decenters the clinical and ethnographic gaze and questions medical authority and narrative construction.

Paper long abstract:

“I tell you this because I want to tell you, but don’t put it in your book!” On several occasions, the woman I call Ms. Dats clearly demarcated what she shared with me in confidence from what could be written about in my ethnography of the Guadeloupean rehabilitation clinic where we met. Beyond her ethnographic refusal, she also practiced diagnostic refusal and asked doctors to refrain from defining her condition. In both instances, she demanded to be heard at the same time as she demanded to not be reduced to facts or syndromes. She demanded that her unknowability be recognized. Doubling down on her refusals by adjoining to hers my own, my writing makes explicit that the full story of Ms. Dats isn't for me to share or my audience to know, yet there is a lot to learn from the practice of opacity she draws us in. I follow her as she strategically navigates treatment in a fraught French Caribbean healthcare system and builds therapeutic alliances while maintaining opacity. I question the recourse to life-narrative and case study in medical and psychological anthropology and argue for a form of ethnographic writing that does not resort to narrations of patient history or centers on diagnosis. Instead, I explore how her practice of strategic opacity decenters the clinical and ethnographic gaze and pushes to re-examine medical authority and narrative construction.