She lives with chronic illness and her sick woman theory is for those who were never meant to survive but did. Explains that johanna hedvas article, sick woman theory, focuses on marginalized people suffering from chronic or mental illness, asking for a change on both. Read the first chapter here.Ī note on the term “sick woman,” from Sick Woman Theory: “Though the identity of “woman” has erased and excluded many (especially women of color and trans and genderfluid people), I choose to use it because it still represents the un-cared for, the secondary, the oppressed, the non-, the un-, the less-than… The Sick Woman is an identity and body that can belong to anyone denied the privileged existence – or the cruelly optimistic promise of such an existence – of the white, straight, healthy, neurotypical, upper and middle-class, cis- and able-bodied man who makes his home in a wealthy country, has never not had health insurance, and whose importance to society is everywhere recognized and made explicit by that society whose importance and care dominates that society, at the expense of everyone else. Sick Woman Theory is a very thought provoking, and possibly controversial essay by Johanna Hedva. The well person is the person well enough to go to work. Sick Fest is Hedva’s first Bay Area appearance, and will be the debut of her latest work on Sick Woman Theory. Sickness More Sick Woman Theory by Johanna Hedva: Sickness as we speak of it today is a capitalist construct, as is its perceived binary opposite, wellness. This question is posed by LA-based writer and activist Johanna Hedva, author of Sick Woman Theory, a powerful polemic that identifies “sickness” as an invention and requirement of capitalism, ensuring that certain people, already historically oppressed, stay invisible and uncared for. As Johanna Hedva writes, Sick Woman Theory maintains that the body and mind are sensitive and reactive to regimes of oppression particularly our current. How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed? Johanna Hedva is a Korean-American writer, artist, musician, and astrologer, who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches, and now lives between LA and Berlin.