Pain in Parallel Places: Interventions in Disability Studies And
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PAIN IN PARALLEL PLACES: INTERVENTIONS IN DISABILITY STUDIES AND SCIENCE FICTION by MARTINA LYNNE MILES A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of English and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2015 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Martina Lynne Miles Title: Pain in Parallel Places: Interventions in Disability Studies and Science Fiction This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of English by: Elizabeth Wheeler Chair Daniel Wojcik Core Member Mary Wood Core Member Kristin Yarris Institutional Representative and Scott L. Pratt Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2015 ii © 2015 Martina Lynne Miles iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Martina Lynne Miles Doctor of Philosophy Department of English June 2015 Title: Pain in Parallel Places: Interventions in Disability Studies and Science Fiction Pain is a physical experience that is often imbued with metaphorical significance. Understanding better how pain operates as a cultural signifier can reveal assumptions about the status of different bodies and subjects. Even though pain is a nearly universal phenomenon, there is currently a dearth of sustained inquiry into pain as a literary, physical, and social phenomenon. What critical analysis there is about pain often metaphorizes the experience and forgets the lived, material realities of pain. At the same time, pain is a factor in virtually all cultural and social interactions, influencing everything from medical care to community acceptance. Thus, uncovering the functions of pain is a necessity. This dissertation reads for the ways pain forges intercorporeal relationships between bodies through the process of co-suffering, offering a new way of looking at the grotesque body. Using examples from a broad range of science fiction texts, from popular non-fiction science writing to superhero comics to novels to television, this dissertation explores the various ways that normative and non-normative pain response is witnessed and perceived. Putting forth a theory of co-suffering as a form of attention to and embodied translation of pain language, this dissertation examines the various ways in which listening to the voice of pain creates intercorporeal kinship between bodies. Through this kinship, bodies become subjects and gain access to iv community. Ultimately, this dissertation shows that, while pain can foster such kinship, predictable and standard pain responses are necessary for creating co-suffering. Thus co- suffering can be emancipatory, as it helps marginalized bodies gain subjectivity, but it can also be a way for cultures to enforce rigid behaviors on subjects, as it requires that bodies conform to those standard pain responses. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Martina Lynne Miles GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene Whittier College, Whittier, California DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, English, 2015, University of Oregon Master of Arts, English, 2012, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, English, 2009, Whittier College AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: 20th and 21st Century American Literature and Popular Culture Disability Studies Science Fiction Contemporary Folklore and Belief PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of English, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, 2010-2015 Instructor Supervisor and Educational Director, Summer Enrichment Program, University of Oregon, Eugene, summer 2014 Language Arts and Humanities Instructor, Summer Enrichment Program, University of Oregon, Eugene, summer 2011 and 2012 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Graduate Teaching Fellowship, English, 2010 to present Donald and Darel Stein Graduate Student Teaching Award, University of Oregon Graduate School: English Department nominee 2013-2014 Sarah Harkness Kirby Award: nominee Spring 2011 and Spring 2012, Department of English, University of Oregon vi Summer Research Award for Graduate Students: Summer 2011 Department of Folklore, University of Oregon Summa cum Laude and Valedictorian, Whittier College, 2009 PUBLICATIONS: McAlvage, Katherine and Martina Miles, eds. Minding the Body: a Writing 122 Casebook. Eugene, OR: University of Oregon Composition Program, 2015. Print. vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I offer my most sincere thanks, first and foremost, to my advisor, mentor, and friend, Betsy Wheeler. My appreciation for her support is immeasurable. Special thanks also to Sarah Ray Rondot, at whose table so much of this was written, and to Katherine McAlvage and Allison Bray, with whom I talked through much of this dissertation. viii DEDICATION For Greg and Desi, who remind me always of the great value of love, play, and kinship. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION: IT PAINS ME TO SAY ............................................ 1 What Pain? Why Pain? ........................................................................... 1 Pain in History ........................................................................................ 9 Considering Impairment: Philosophy, Disability Studies, and Pain ................................................................................................... 12 What Science Fiction? Why Science Fiction? ........................................ 19 Star Map: The Journey Through Parallel Places ..................................... 24 II. SELF AND FUTURE: THEORIES OF PAIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD ................................................................................................... 31 Case Study: Fetal Pain ............................................................................ 31 The Undiscovered Country: Theorizing Pain as a Language ................. 36 New World: Pain in the Blank Slate of the Postapocalypse ................... 45 Insides and Outsides: Fetal Pain and the Apocalypse ............................. 70 III. WHICH FACE REPRESENTS YOUR PAIN? SUBJECTIVITY IN NON-NORMATIVE PAIN RESPONSE ............................................... 76 Case Study: The Pain Scale .................................................................... 76 Insensate: Congenital Insensitivity to Pain and Subjectivity .................. 94 Pain and People: CIP and Subjectivity ................................................... 115 IV. SUB, SUPER, AND EVERYONE ELSE: NON-NORMATIVE PAIN RESPONSE FROM ZOMBIES TO SUPERMAN ................................. 126 Case Study: Crips in Culture ................................................................... 126 Sub, Super, and Everywhere in Between ................................................ 134 Subhuman Others: The Walking Dead .............................................. 136 Superhumans, Superheroes, Subjects: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and All-Star Superman ........................................................ 147 Otherworldly Inhumans: The Celestials of The Eternals ................. 162 Heroism and Humanity ........................................................................... 168 x Chapter Page V. GOOD DOG, GOOD PIG, GOOD ROBOT: NONHUMAN KINSHIP, FOR BETTER OR WORSE ................................................................... 174 Case Study: Humans, Animals, in Nature .............................................. 174 Animals All: Cross-Species Kinship ...................................................... 181 Leap to the Future: Bioengineered Beings and the Limits of Life ........ 200 I Feel Therefore I’m Real: Robot Subjectivity ....................................... 224 “You Become. It Takes a Long Time” ................................................... 242 VI. CONCLUSION: WE’VE TAKEN GREAT PAINS TO GET HERE .... 249 The Author in Pain .................................................................................. 249 Pain Matter: Thinking Through the Texts (One Last Time) ................... 255 Pain Matters ............................................................................................ 260 REFERENCES CITED ................................................................................. 264 xi LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. The McGill Pain Questionnaire's human figure ................................................... 76 2. The standard numerical pain scale ....................................................................... 77 3. The Wong-Baker Faces Pain Scale ...................................................................... 79 4. The Faces Pain Scale – Revised ........................................................................... 82 5. The Finn Faces Pain Scale ................................................................................... 83 6. Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half pain scale ................................................... 85 7. A common iteration of the “Your Excuse Is Invalid” meme ............................... 131 8. Pistorius’s “everyday prostheses” ........................................................................ 133 9. The Celestials, from The Eternals #3 .................................................................. 163 10. The final page of The Eternals #7 “The Fourth Host” ....................................... 165 xii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: IT PAINS ME TO SAY “My point is that illness is not a metaphor, and that the most truthful way of regarding illness – and the healthiest way