Abjectly Boundless ─ Boundaries, Bodies and Health Work

Within a variety of practice environments, health professionals often experience feelings of disgust and repulsion towards the presence of an abject object. Cadaverous, sick, disabled bodies, troubled minds, wounds, vomit and so forth are all part of health and care work and threaten the clean and proper bodies of those who undertake it, yet this 'unclean' side of health work is rarely accounted for in academic literature. This volume employs the work of Julia Kristeva through a range of case studies drawn from care and nursing settings around the world. It brings together work from researchers and practitioners within the social and health sciences, the caring professions and psychotherapy, to expose and highlight the important impact of the concept of abjection, which historically has been silenced in the health sciences.

Trudy Rudge is a professor in the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Sydney, Australia. Dave Holmes is a professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences and University Research Chair in Forensic Nursing at the University of Ottawa, Canada