Reiffenrath Memoirs of Well-Being

Rewriting Discourses of Illness and Disability
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-3-8394-3546-5
Verlag: transcript
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 225 mm

Reihe: KörperKulturen

As the body politics of life writing in the United States change, illness and disability memoirs receive considerable attention. Although these narratives are framed by a lack of health, they abundantly present health and do so beyond its binary relationship to the pathological. This book departs from previous scholarship by bringing into focus the writers' representations of cure, recovery, and healing as well as their reluctance to bring closure to their narratives and align their stories with traditional notions of health. These memoirs thus partake in the construction of alternative narratives of illness and disability.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Reiffenrath, Tanja

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literatursoziologie, Gender Studies
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie der Lebensart, Well-Being
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Invalidität, Krankheit und Abhängigkeit: Soziale Aspekte
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Contents;5
2;Acknowledgements;7
3;1. Introduction;9
4;CONTEXTUAL AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK;27
4.1;2. Illness and Disability in Contemporary Memoirs;29
4.1.1;2.1 Illness and Disability on the Literary Market: The Age of the Memoir;29
4.1.2;2.2 The Personal and the Theoretical: Memoirs of Well-Being as Academic Memoirs;36
4.1.3;2.3 Narrating Illness and Disability: Conventional Scripts and Their Revisions;40
4.2;3. Approaching ‘Well-Being’;49
4.2.1;3.1 Health Problems and the Problem with ‘Health’;49
4.2.2;3.2 Rewriting Cure: The Remission Society;60
4.2.3;3.3 Recovering the Body: Embodiment and the Remission Society;68
5;THE ‘CASE STUDIES’;73
5.1;4. Healing Beyond Reconstruction: Ampu-Narration in Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals;75
5.1.1;4.1 Against Linearity, Certainty, and Closure: Deconstructing the Triumph Narrative in The Cancer Journals;83
5.1.2;4.2 Subverting the (Silent) War on Breast Cancer: Lorde’s Vision of the ‘Warrior’;93
5.1.3;4.3 Exposing the Post-Mastectomy Body: Lorde’s Rejection of (Narrative) Prosthesis;103
5.2;5. Musical Cu[r]e: Reconnection in Oliver Sacks’s A Leg to Stand On;119
5.2.1;5.1 “Bringing the Body Back In”: Embodiment in Sacks’s Memoir;125
5.2.2;5.2 Encountering the Doctor: Sacks, Dr. Swan, and the Disappointment with the Biomedical Cure;130
5.2.3;5.3 Recovery in Action: Sacks’s “Muscle Music”;142
5.2.4;5.4 Merging the Objective and the Subjective: Sacks’s ‘Neurology of Identity’;148
5.3;6. “She Rides It Like an Untamed Pony”: The Politics of Well-Being in Simi Linton’s My Body Politic;157
5.3.1;6.1 My Body Politic and the ‘New Disability Memoir’;162
5.3.2;6.2 From Cure to Accommodation: Introducing Disability Rights into the Progress Narrative;167
5.3.3;6.3 Becoming Disabled: Community, Sexuality, and the “Body Politic”;177
5.3.4;6.4 Beholding (the Pleasures of) Disabled Bodies;189
5.4;7. Variation and Well-Being: Rethinking The Impaired Body in Kenny Fries’s The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory;199
5.4.1;7.1 Rethinking Impairment beyond the Medical and Social Model;205
5.4.2;7.2 Rewriting the (Hi)Story of the Impaired Body in Fries’s Memoir;214
5.4.3;7.3 Variation and Contingency: Deconstructing Dis/Ability;223
5.4.4;7.4 “Everything an Adaptation”: Alternative Ways of Coping with Impairment;230
5.5;8. Rewriting the Diagnostic Narrative: Siri Hustvedt’s The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves;239
5.5.1;8.1 The Personal Meets the Scientific: The ‘Brain Memoir’;244
5.5.2;8.2 Beyond Diagnosis: The Case of The Shaking Woman;251
5.5.3;8.3 “A Woman is Shaking:” Hysteria and the Discourse of Disease;257
5.5.4;8.4 The Shaking Woman as Therapeutic Narrative;269
5.6;9. Conclusion;281
6;Bibliography;295

Über Autor(innen)

Tanja Reiffenrath works in Student and Academic Services at the University of Goettingen, Germany. Her research interests include socially inclusive pedagogies and the internationalization of the curricula.