Illness as Narrative

193 Pages·2012·3.579 MB·English

by  Ann Jurecic

Illness as narratIve
PIttsburgh serIes In ComPosItIon, lIteraCy,
and Culture
David Bartholomae and Jean Ferguson Carr, Editors
i
llness
as n arratIve
Ann Jurecic
University of Pittsburgh Press
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright © 2012, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jurecic, Ann, 1962–
Illness as narrative / Ann Jurecic.
p. cm. — (Pittsburgh series in composition, literacy, and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8229-6190-1 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
1. American literature—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Diseases in literature.
3. Autobiography—Authorship. I. Title.
PS228.D57J87 2012
810.9'3561—dc23 0 211048866
for my teachers

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Chapter 1
Illness Narratives and the Challenge to Criticism 3
Chapter 2
Life Narratives in the Risk Society 18
Chapter 3
Responding to the Pain of Others 43
Chapter 4
Sontag, Suffering, and the Work of Writing 67
Chapter 5
Theory’s Aging Body 92
Chapter 6
Reparative Reading 113
Notes 133
Works Cited 149
Index 169
vii

aCknowledgments
This project found me. The ideas for Illness as Narrative emerged after my
husband was diagnosed with cancer for the first time. They began to evolve with
a recurrence of that cancer, the diagnosis of a second kind of cancer, and yet an-
other recurrence. The experience of four surgeries and three trips through che-
motherapy was his. My experience was defined by all that happened around his
diagnoses, treatments, and recoveries, which included listening to stories that
people told me just because I’d become a marginal member of the cancer club.
Over time, I would find myself in a crowded lecture hall, a grocery store, or the
audience of a school play, and I’d be able to connect many of the faces there to
stories of suffering. I became conscious of a new, previously invisible dimen-
sion of my workplace and my community, which has never faded from view.
I want to take a moment to say a bit more about the origins of my proj-
ect because my acknowledgments of the many people who supported me as I
wrote Illness as Narrative are best understood within that context. As a scholar
in writing studies, I’ve long been interested in the intersection of literature and
literacies, where the aesthetic and rhetorical merge. As stories about illness ac-
cumulated around me, I used my training to study their history, politics, and
form and thus to connect two parts of my life that otherwise felt intolerably sep-
arate. I had my professional life, thinking and writing about how meaning gets
made with language, and I had my life in the waiting room, where I heard the
stories of the ill, their caregivers, and their loved ones. The task of connecting
scholarship to everyday matters of concern became an even more compelling
challenge when I realized that the critical practices I’d acquired through years
of training weren’t the right tools for the job of interpreting illness memoirs.
Critique is all well and good, but I wanted to more fully understand the various
ix