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State of Dis-ease

A transdisciplinary workshop on South African health and illness

Brought to you by the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study
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Launch Workshop

Artists, academics and practitioners in conversation about pressing South African health questions. 
25 - 28  March 
2019

The study of health and illness raises questions at the very heart of our humanity: questions of how we live and die. Health is neither a purely medical, nor a purely biological question. Instead, it holds profound implications for our social lives, surfacing patterns of power and privilege, puzzles of mind and body, as well as practices of care and healing. Studies of health and illness have significant instrumental value for us all: helping us to advance justice, improve lives, inform policy, and stave off suffering. But they also hold intrinsic importance. To investigate illness is to force a confrontation with human fragility: it is to wrestle with the fact that human life, with all its ingenuity and imagination, is lived within the constraints of a body.

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Despite the importance of biomedicine and clinical innovation, there is growing acknowledgement that technical solutions alone cannot address health questions. South Africa’s ‘quadruple burden of disease’ is characterised by colliding epidemics, each rooted in social conditions, and with profound social implications: HIV/TB, maternal and child mortality, noncommunicable diseases and violent injury. Health workers bemoan the limitations of their interventions, biological data leaves many questions unanswered, and addressing health systems has become an increasingly salient focus. A holistic understanding of the conditions that produce ill-health, or support healing, will yield more significant (and more lasting) gains.

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Although interdisciplinarity is increasingly sought after in fields of health and illness, there are reasons researchers find it difficult to achieve: from how research is valued and evaluated, to the ways in which funding is structured, and incentives to specialise early. More so, attempts at interdisciplinarity have often stopped at multidisciplinary — involving a series of disconnected contributions from different disciplines. This JIAS workshop provides an opportunity for researchers, practitioners, artists and the public to engage in genuine collaboration, that combines and transcends disciplines.

The Workshop

Looking Back: State of Dis-ease Workshop 2019

Programme

FOLLOW LINKS TO DOWNLOAD PRESENTATIONS

 2 5 M A R C H

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Literature and Illness: Writers in Conversation

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Chair: Megan Ross, author of Milk Fever

Maneo Mohale, writer editor, journalist, activist

Lauren Segal, author of Cancer: A Love Story

Kobus Moolman, "Not Falling, But Floating": a reading from Swimming Lessons and Other Stories

Nozizwe Cynthia Jele, author of The Ones With Purpose

Phumlani Pikoli, author The Fatuous State of Severity

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2 6 M A R C H

Launching ‘State of Dis-ease’

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Bongani Ngqulunga, Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS)

Mmamoloko Tryphosa Kubayi-Ngubane, the Minister of Science and Technology

Beth Vale, Convenor of State of Dis-ease Project

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The State of Health Studies in South Africa

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Chair: Susan Levine, UCT Anthropology

Nolwazi Mkhwanazi, WISER

Fareed Abdullah, Medical Research Council

Chris Colvin, UCT School of Public Health

Firdouza Waggie, UWC Community and Health Sciences

Carla Tsampiras, UCT Primary Healthcare Directorate

 

Launch

BMJ Special Edition Medical Humanities in Africa

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Care as Work

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Chair:  Gloria Maimela, Wits Reproductive Health Institute

Tendai Mafuma, Section 27, on community health work.

Job Zwane, Wits History Workshop, on the gossip about nurses.

Laurel Baldwin-Ragaven, Wits Family Medicine, on the health professions.

 

Leanne Brady, UCT Health Policy & Systems, After the Night: health work & violence

 

 

 

Where is My Mind? Artists, Healers and Practitioners on Mental Health

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Chair: Gillian Eagle, Wits Psychology Department

Sinethemba Makanya, WISER. Ukugula kwabantu: Traditional healers & mental health

Thembela ‘Nymless’ Ngayi, creator of The Great African Horror Story 

Tsoku Maela, creator of Abstract Peaces

Melvyn Freeman, Consultant in Mental Health & NCDs

Victoria Hume, Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance, Creator of Delirium

 

 

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2 7 M A R C H

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Advocacy Brief: Retha Viviers, ME/ CFS in South Africa

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The Biggest Health Stories of the Past Year: Journalists in

Conversation

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Chair: Pontsho Pilane, Health-e

Dylan Bush, Bhekisisa

Sibongile Nkosi, Health-e

Mark Heywood, Section-27

Vuyo Mkize, City Press 

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Breathless: The State of the South African Lung

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Chair: Barry Kistnasamy, Compensation Commission for Occupational Diseases

Stacy Hardy, creator of Museum of Lungs  

(for a transcript of Stacy's writing click here)

Carina du Toit, Legal Resources Centre, on the silicosis class action

Anastasia Koch, Nomfundo Sibiya & Zondikazi  Mtonjeni,

Eh!Woza: art & science to engage youth on TB.

Bavesh Kana, Wits Centre for Excellence for Biomedical TB research

Programme

OUR AIMS

Pear Chef
Birthday Collage
Summer Collage
Retro Girls

Convene  transdisciplinary dialogue on PRESSING QUESTIONS for South African health

 

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Foster collaborative, cross-disciplinary PARTNERSHIPS and projects.
DISRUPT disciplinary silos in the study and practice of healthcare.
Ignite the public IMAGINATION on questions of health and illness.
Presenters & Discussants

Contributors

Everything Is A Deathly Flower

 

Maneo Mohale

 

In place of no, my leaking mouth spills foxgloves.

Trumpets of tongued blossoms litter the locked closet.

Up to my ankles in petals, the hanged gowns close in,

mother multiplied, more – there’re always more

“Closet of Red” – Saeed Jones, Prelude to Bruise

 

The memory returns to me as a dream.

Inkblot rising black, weeping porous on the night’s page.

In place of my room, I lie sleeping in an open forest,

moss a bed beneath me, blanket of cedar leaves – fragrant

and warm as a secret prayer.

Until you arrive. In all your silent menace

you are keeping watch. Your night vigil brief,

searching for a moment when my sleep dips deepest.

You sneak into the moss and touch me without my consent.

In place of no, my leaking mouth spills foxgloves

 

soundlessly onto the pillowed green.

You do not stop. Instead, you mistake the flood of petals

from my mouth as pleasure. You do not stop. Instead,

you read my body’s rigidness as Yes. You read my silence as Permission.

You read my closed eyes as Assent. And my turned head

as Of Course I Am Black and Woman and Queer

What Else Could My Body Be For But Entry

How Else Am I Legible But As Safe To Violate

Everything is a deathly flower.

Trumpets of tongued blossoms litter the locked closet

 

standing unmoved behind us. Panic paces its itch

across my back and for a moment, I forget my power.

Until I arrive. In the dream, everything is different.

I will my eyes to open. I throw you off of me

onto the floor. I summon the vines to snake

around your wrists like venom. In the dream, the ground

asks you what on earth you are doing.

In the dream, everything rises to protect me.

The petals from my mouth are survivors. I am

up to my ankles in petals, the hanged gowns close in

 

ensnaring you and suddenly I am safe. Everything

is different in the dream. In the dream, I am safe

forever. I leave my moss bed with bare feet.

Somewhere a lover calls me by name.

“Gift-mother”, she says.

We find each other by the water. I

leave the foxgloves behind me.

Every petal that fell

from my mouth is a survivor, they are my

mother multiplied, more – there’re always more.

Profilng our presentes

Profiling Our Contributors