DISABILITY NARRATIVES and a RHETORIC of RESISTANCE By
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Bodies in Culture, Culture in Bodies: Disability Narratives and a Rhetoric of Resistance Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Quackenbush, Nicole Marie Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 29/09/2021 14:12:32 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194390 BODIES IN CULTURE, CULTURE IN BODIES: DISABILITY NARRATIVES AND A RHETORIC OF RESISTANCE by Nicole Quackenbush _____________________ Copyright © Nicole Quackenbush 2008 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WITH A MAJOR IN RHETORIC, COMPOSITION, AND THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2008 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Nicole Quackenbush entitled Bodies in Culture, Culture in Bodies: Disability Narratives and a Rhetoric of Resistance and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________________________________________________________________ Date: August 5, 2008 Theresa Enos _______________________________________________________________________ Date: August 5, 2008 Anne-Marie Hall _______________________________________________________________________ Date: August 5, 2008 Thomas P. Miller Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ________________________________________________ Date: August 5, 2008 Dissertation Director: Theresa Enos 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Nicole Quackenbush 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First I would like to thank the members of my committee, Drs. Theresa Enos, Anne-Marie Hall, and Tom Miller, for their commitment to this project and their unwavering support throughout my time in the RCTE program. I would also like to thank Dr. Julie Jung for her feedback on my first two chapters and authors Rik Carlson and Dorothy Wall for participating in interviews that allowed me to better understand their work as rhetoricians. Last, I would like to thank the members of my multiple sclerosis support group for always reminding me to “live my dreams.” 5 DEDICATION For Jason: I think of you and I am not afraid. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION—BODIES IN CULTURE, CULTURE IN BODIES: CONNECTING DISABILITY STUDIES AND RHETORIC .................... 8 Defining Disability: Expanding the Social Model.......................................................... 9 Toward an Inclusive Theory of Rhetorics of the Body................................................. 12 Rediscovering Disability Narratives in the Field of Disability Studies........................ 16 Defining Narrative as Rhetoric and Disability Narratives as a Rhetoric of Resistance 23 Outline of Chapters to Follow....................................................................................... 27 CHAPTER TWO: TO KILL OR TO CURE?: THE WAR METAPHOR, OTHERING, AND CULTURAL ERASURE IN THE DISCOURSE OF DISEASE ......................................................................................................................... 30 “‘It’s a Little Hard to Explain’”: The Constraints of the War Metaphor in Discourses of Polio, Breast Cancer, and Multiple Sclerosis ........................................................... 35 Unconquerable Bodies: People with ME/CFS as the Enemy ....................................... 42 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 50 CHAPTER THREE: ILLNESS AS INVISIBILITY: THE METAPHOR OF MYSTERY AS RESISTANCE IN NARRATIVES OF ME/CFS BY RIK CARLSON AND DOROTHY WALL .......................................................................... 53 Alternative Metaphors as A Challenge to the Restitution Narrative of Illness............. 55 Materiality, Lived Experience, and The Tenor of ME/CFS ......................................... 58 Embodying Symptoms and Signs: The Vehicle of the Invisible .................................. 65 Re-Mythicizing Disease................................................................................................ 72 CHAPTER FOUR: FROM “INVALIDS” TO “PRISONERS” AND BACK AGAIN?: HISTORICIZING THE MATERIAL RHETORIC OF THE WHEELCHAIR-USER AS A RHETORICAL BODY THROUGHOUT THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY- TO MID-TWENTIETH CENTURIES ................... 75 Exclusion from History and a History of Exclusion: In Search of the Wheelchair- User as Subject.............................................................................................................. 79 The Early to Mid-Twentieth Century Wheelchair, the Medical Model of Disability, and the Rhetoric of Containment .................................................................................. 87 The India-reed Chair and the E&J Model..................................................................... 87 The Rehabilitation Movement, the Polio Virus, and the Emergence of the Medical Model of Disability....................................................................................................... 90 The Rise of the Rhetoric of Containment ..................................................................... 94 Franklin Delano Roosevelt as Rhetorician and “Cured Cripple”: A Case Study ......... 97 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 103 CHAPTER FIVE: DEFREAKING THE DISABLED BODY: RECLAIMING SUBJECTIVITY AND RESISTING OTHERNESS IN DISABILITY NARRATIVES BY HARRIET MCBRYDE JOHNSON, JOHN HOCKENBERRY, AND DEAN KRAMER............................................................... 108 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS—CONTINUED The Freak as Object or “Other” in Feminist Disability Theory.................................. 112 Speaking of Physical Difference: The Disabled Body as Subject .............................. 115 Johnson and the Natural Body .................................................................................... 117 Hockenberry and the Unique Body............................................................................. 120 Kramer and the Normal Body..................................................................................... 123 Johnson, Hockenberry, Kramer, and the Defreaked Body ......................................... 125 Wheelchair Use and “What-Happens-Next”: Resisting Otherness by Claiming Agency and Enfreaking Ableist Ideology................................................................... 126 CONCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH AND FOR PEDAGOGY ................................................................................................................. 133 WORKS CITED............................................................................................................ 141 8 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION—BODIES IN CULTURE, CULTURE IN BODIES: CONNECTING DISABILITY STUDIES AND RHETORIC In the following dissertation I historicize dominant discourses of disability and place my analysis of five published disability narratives in dialogue with those discourses in order to show how the authors of these narratives craft alternative rhetorics to resist representation that casts them as unsuited to public space. Critical to my dissertation is my belief that personal narratives by rhetoricians with disabilities are invaluable sites of rhetorical inquiry, especially in light of the marginalized subject position of people with disabilities in the larger culture. Because my dissertation connects rhetoric and disability studies, my purpose is two-fold. For rhetorical theorists, I argue that attention to dominant discourses of disability and the alternative rhetorics in disability narratives can expand our present understanding of rhetorics of the body to interrogate: (1) who has the authority to speak and who doesn’t; (2) who the dominant culture grants the position of subject and who the dominant culture sees as inherently “Other” or object; and (3) how differing intersections of identity as configured by the actual appearance of the body can often determine whether or not the body “speaks” or is “spoken of” and, in conjunction, whether or not that body is heard, ignored, or silenced. For disability studies scholars, I hope to rediscover the disability narrative as a genre that provides people with disabilities an opportunity to make meaning of their embodied