Michelle Chiang, inspired by Samuel Beckett, started the exploration of embodied lives in absolute systems that persistently fail to account for lived experiences. After the publication of Beckett’s Intuitive Spectator: Me to Play (Palgrave, 2018) where she examines how the artist’s dramatization of loss appeal more to the audience’s intuition than the intellect, she turns to a more in-depth consideration of loss in absurdist literature which she observes had anticipated the impact of medical and technological systems on lives today. Her literary research intersects with her medical humanities interest in narratives of loss in healthcare settings: the loss of physical control, the witnessing of loss, and the experiences of dying. Interdisciplinary projects, including a qualitative stroke study funded by the Rehabilitation Research Institute of Singapore (RRIS), contribute to Michelle’s central work The Posthuman in Literature, Medicine and Technology.
