Banks’s discussion of writing through the body offers us a vehicle and space for many of the important tenants of cultural rhetorics: action, risk, and transformation. As he argues, such writing offers a kind of ethical (and ethos) checks and balance for English and writing studies, a possible strategy for addressing what Bourdieu’s criticism of social science research.
I am interested in how the idea of (dis)embodied rhetorics (doesn't) work within the university and its disciplines.
What is a body in a discipline?
What roles do bodies play in the academy? What roles do bodies play in various disciplines? How do scholars in disciplines discuss bodies?
Assumption: Disciplines require academics to be disembodied writers.
Bodies exist in some form in all disciplines, but they are usually a noun or an object of a field rather than a verb. Bodies are studied. Bodies are dissected. They are the artifacts rather than meaning-making beings.
Does your discipline require you to get rid of your body when you write? What challenges does this raise for you as a writer? A teacher of writing? Student writers? Conscious and subconscious resistance?
How may the notion of writing as an embodied practice disrupt the everyday or norm of writing in your discipline? What are the risks? What are the rewards? (Ethics and ethos)
What role does/may shame play in a body writing in a discipline?
What is a body in my life/research?
I have the beginning of a couple of (rough) narrative threads in response to this question. One is a narrative involving my sister, and it eventually spread out to stories involving other experiences I have had involving other bodies and my own. I am currently considering the purpose these threads could play in my greater research questions/project on faculty-writer identities, but I do not have an answer for how they may do that yet. Let me know if you may have any suggestions?
Emily
My sister died Tuesday, January 8th, 2008. She was 32 year old. It was in the middle of the night or early in the morning, depending on your perspective. She had been sick for a long time, and the end had been near for a while too. After her last surgery – during the doctor-family conference before she had regained consciousness – the oncological surgeon explained in clear terms: “We removed as much of the cancer as possible, but it has just progressed too much.” With a slight pause and grimace, she finished: “At most, Emily only has about eight months left…” She trailed off as she finished, “to live”.
That moment sparked a specific kind of anxiety – my self left my body and all that was left was clumsy logic and reason. My mom melted into my dad’s arms, and I realized my role in the situation: I was going to have to deliver a death sentence to my sister.
♮♮♮
My favorite memory from her final days was New Year’s Eve. She had moved back to our mom’s house, and hospice had already replaced the worn softness of her childhood bed with a sterile, hospital cot. At that point her body was thin and weak, but she was still strong. I don’t know exactly what we were doing when 2008 came at midnight because I fell asleep curled up next to her as we laughed occasionally, watching a Kathy Griffin stand-up special.
I could have never imagined how the presence of our two bodies could make a hospital bed feel like home.
♮♮♮
Emily was always what my mom called modest. She was beautiful; curly light brown hair and amber eyes that dripped with invitations to relax and enjoy. But she never liked being in a bathing suit, even as a small child, and she was not comfortable talking about the contours of the female body, especially hers, in serious tones. If something was off or wrong, she would quietly go to the doctor or assume that it would pass.
The summer after her senior year of high school, I remember seeing the grimace of pain on her face and faint rumbles about a doctor’s appointment, but I was too self absorbed to think it significant.
This was never said outright, but there were assumptions about girls who went to a gynecologist: if you went, it meant you were “sexually active”. I don’t know if this lore kept our mom from encouraging us or us from wanting to go or both or neither… When she did go, it was something we never talked about until many years later.
She undressed in the closet of a patient room, came out with only a paper-thin robe, sat upright while waiting, she eventually slid her bottom to the edge of paper-lined table, and placed each of her legs in the stirrups. The light examination birthed heavy repercussions. As he spoke, her posture shrank: “There is nothing wrong with you. You are just nervous about going away to college.”
Emily had talked about Chapel Hill since middle school. Even though it was considered an insult to my father’s eastern North Carolina pride (for a reason I have never understood), she had a UNC pennant hanging on her bedroom wall since middle school. She worked hard in high school and pushed herself to be the “kind of student UNC would want”, and our dad feigned happiness with a single request: Don’t come back an asshole.
She received early acceptance to UNC during the fall of her senior year. I was a freshman at the same high school, a position in which I only noticed all the work her at home and school that her accomplishments required.
♮♮♮
January 6th, 2008 was the most difficult day I have encountered so far. That was a day when not only my sister’s body deceived her but I did also. That deception left ringing in both of our ears.
At that point, she hadn’t really been able to eat since October. There were blockages in her digestive track that couldn’t be rectified, or perhaps the doctors didn’t see the use in trying. As much as possible, she had continued to live in a usual, normal way. When hospice moved in, it seemed like some kind of a shift or divergence from normal, but she did not recognize it as defeat. She continued working, but it was from home – first hers and then our mom’s. She still kept up with witty banter, social relations, and good-natured gossip. She was attempting to stay on track even though her body had sidelined itself long before.
♮♮♮
I was in college and working part time at an insurance agency, answering phones and playing Solitaire on an outdated PC, and she had graduated from UNC and acquired a job in an insurance agency in Chapel Hill when she called speaking in a frightening tone – was it a question or a statement? “When I push on my stomach, it is hard…?”
<haven’t finished>
Dr. Cooper
I’ve had migraines since 2001, and while they are miserable, it was even more difficult to find a decent neurologist in town. Most of them position their bodies towards anything but the patients. Their computer screens and charts receive the bulk of their attention while we are perched, in paper-thin robes, on the examination table. They use language that was clearly not intended for us and rarely address questions in meaningful ways. I often tried to disrupt their medical rhythms by attempting to force eye contact, but even when contact was made, it was quickly shuck off.
I went through at least three brain doctors before I lucked up. My current doctor was unavailable, so I saw one who was available. I was prepared for the usual struggle to communicate – to listen and understand, to talk and be understood. Dr. Copper threw me off immediately by shaking my hand and asking me how I was doing with unexpected socialness. I rolled with it.
That conversation was the first of many. I ditched the laptop docs and saw Dr. Copper exclusively.
Not only is he well educated and an abled communicator, but he also has an approach that is unfortunately rare in my medical experiences: he doesn’t just bring his mind into the patient rooms; he also brings his body. He does this by sharing (usually) relevant information about his own self and body when he is working with patients.
Because of this, I know that, like me, he has migraines. Like me, he was on a medical biography kick a few years ago. Like me, he has Crohn’s Disease. And like me, he indulges in bad reality tv when he needs a break. At times, this information is offered in a blatant manner. Other times, he is subtler. Overall, his ethos and ethics (Banks) are constructed in the minds and bodies of his patients because he has carefully constructed them in his mind and body.
I think I can imagine the risk and possible shame that is involved with Dr. Cooper bringing his whole self into patient rooms, and perhaps he is not embodied with each patient. But I have never seen or heard from other patients about him disembodied. Because of this approach, I have learned about his wife who is from Spain and enjoys interior design, his kids who are in and will be off to college soon, and his dog who tends to have fits of mania and then a kind of depressive crash. His giving (and/or my taking) sparks a subtle reciprocity that I rarely even have to consider.
I have considered the fact that he knows more about my body and my self than any other doctor that I have ever worked with. Because he is willing to take deliberate risks by bringing his body into the room, I find myself being more mindful and intentional out and inside this doctor’s office. I know that if I at least attempt to talk and be heard, he will attempt to listen and understand.
♮♮♮
I am thinking about him because I had a doctor’s appointment this morning at 8am. There was horrible traffic because of a car accident on the main street outside of my neighborhood, so a trip that is usually less than 5 minutes took more than 20. By the time I arrived and was checked in, the nurse observed my heart rate was around 122. (That’s not good.)
I assumed the most difficult part of the appointment would be getting there, but I was wrong.
<also not done yet>
These are some beginnings.
I feel this kind of writing kind of writing in my bones. That feeling reminds me that it is a risk, but it also reminds me that I am alive. Referencing my post about Jeff Grabill involving The Walking Dead: I’m not ashes. My body and self can be nouns and verbs, participating in meaningful ways and creating meaning for myself and others. And I am going to act, in what I often see as a d-bag manner, and quote myself in that blog because (at least right now) feel worthwhile: “Being alive doesn’t mean sitting and watching… on the sidelines and getting an idea or outline of what it means to be living. We will be involved in life in messy ways. Meaningful research reflects the idea that we ain’t ashes.”
*I will feel better if I go ahead and say upfront that the origin of the ideas represented in this post were the results of a collaboration… (but, then, what isn’t?) I engaged Dr. Will Banks in a conversation about his College English piece and how it may apply to my research, and while he listened more than talked, he asked significant questions and contributed important ideas to my thinking about this blog and my future research.
I am interested in how the idea of (dis)embodied rhetorics (doesn't) work within the university and its disciplines.
What is a body in a discipline?
What roles do bodies play in the academy? What roles do bodies play in various disciplines? How do scholars in disciplines discuss bodies?
Assumption: Disciplines require academics to be disembodied writers.
Bodies exist in some form in all disciplines, but they are usually a noun or an object of a field rather than a verb. Bodies are studied. Bodies are dissected. They are the artifacts rather than meaning-making beings.
Does your discipline require you to get rid of your body when you write? What challenges does this raise for you as a writer? A teacher of writing? Student writers? Conscious and subconscious resistance?
How may the notion of writing as an embodied practice disrupt the everyday or norm of writing in your discipline? What are the risks? What are the rewards? (Ethics and ethos)
What role does/may shame play in a body writing in a discipline?
What is a body in my life/research?
I have the beginning of a couple of (rough) narrative threads in response to this question. One is a narrative involving my sister, and it eventually spread out to stories involving other experiences I have had involving other bodies and my own. I am currently considering the purpose these threads could play in my greater research questions/project on faculty-writer identities, but I do not have an answer for how they may do that yet. Let me know if you may have any suggestions?
Emily
My sister died Tuesday, January 8th, 2008. She was 32 year old. It was in the middle of the night or early in the morning, depending on your perspective. She had been sick for a long time, and the end had been near for a while too. After her last surgery – during the doctor-family conference before she had regained consciousness – the oncological surgeon explained in clear terms: “We removed as much of the cancer as possible, but it has just progressed too much.” With a slight pause and grimace, she finished: “At most, Emily only has about eight months left…” She trailed off as she finished, “to live”.
That moment sparked a specific kind of anxiety – my self left my body and all that was left was clumsy logic and reason. My mom melted into my dad’s arms, and I realized my role in the situation: I was going to have to deliver a death sentence to my sister.
♮♮♮
My favorite memory from her final days was New Year’s Eve. She had moved back to our mom’s house, and hospice had already replaced the worn softness of her childhood bed with a sterile, hospital cot. At that point her body was thin and weak, but she was still strong. I don’t know exactly what we were doing when 2008 came at midnight because I fell asleep curled up next to her as we laughed occasionally, watching a Kathy Griffin stand-up special.
I could have never imagined how the presence of our two bodies could make a hospital bed feel like home.
♮♮♮
Emily was always what my mom called modest. She was beautiful; curly light brown hair and amber eyes that dripped with invitations to relax and enjoy. But she never liked being in a bathing suit, even as a small child, and she was not comfortable talking about the contours of the female body, especially hers, in serious tones. If something was off or wrong, she would quietly go to the doctor or assume that it would pass.
The summer after her senior year of high school, I remember seeing the grimace of pain on her face and faint rumbles about a doctor’s appointment, but I was too self absorbed to think it significant.
This was never said outright, but there were assumptions about girls who went to a gynecologist: if you went, it meant you were “sexually active”. I don’t know if this lore kept our mom from encouraging us or us from wanting to go or both or neither… When she did go, it was something we never talked about until many years later.
She undressed in the closet of a patient room, came out with only a paper-thin robe, sat upright while waiting, she eventually slid her bottom to the edge of paper-lined table, and placed each of her legs in the stirrups. The light examination birthed heavy repercussions. As he spoke, her posture shrank: “There is nothing wrong with you. You are just nervous about going away to college.”
Emily had talked about Chapel Hill since middle school. Even though it was considered an insult to my father’s eastern North Carolina pride (for a reason I have never understood), she had a UNC pennant hanging on her bedroom wall since middle school. She worked hard in high school and pushed herself to be the “kind of student UNC would want”, and our dad feigned happiness with a single request: Don’t come back an asshole.
She received early acceptance to UNC during the fall of her senior year. I was a freshman at the same high school, a position in which I only noticed all the work her at home and school that her accomplishments required.
♮♮♮
January 6th, 2008 was the most difficult day I have encountered so far. That was a day when not only my sister’s body deceived her but I did also. That deception left ringing in both of our ears.
At that point, she hadn’t really been able to eat since October. There were blockages in her digestive track that couldn’t be rectified, or perhaps the doctors didn’t see the use in trying. As much as possible, she had continued to live in a usual, normal way. When hospice moved in, it seemed like some kind of a shift or divergence from normal, but she did not recognize it as defeat. She continued working, but it was from home – first hers and then our mom’s. She still kept up with witty banter, social relations, and good-natured gossip. She was attempting to stay on track even though her body had sidelined itself long before.
♮♮♮
I was in college and working part time at an insurance agency, answering phones and playing Solitaire on an outdated PC, and she had graduated from UNC and acquired a job in an insurance agency in Chapel Hill when she called speaking in a frightening tone – was it a question or a statement? “When I push on my stomach, it is hard…?”
<haven’t finished>
Dr. Cooper
I’ve had migraines since 2001, and while they are miserable, it was even more difficult to find a decent neurologist in town. Most of them position their bodies towards anything but the patients. Their computer screens and charts receive the bulk of their attention while we are perched, in paper-thin robes, on the examination table. They use language that was clearly not intended for us and rarely address questions in meaningful ways. I often tried to disrupt their medical rhythms by attempting to force eye contact, but even when contact was made, it was quickly shuck off.
I went through at least three brain doctors before I lucked up. My current doctor was unavailable, so I saw one who was available. I was prepared for the usual struggle to communicate – to listen and understand, to talk and be understood. Dr. Copper threw me off immediately by shaking my hand and asking me how I was doing with unexpected socialness. I rolled with it.
That conversation was the first of many. I ditched the laptop docs and saw Dr. Copper exclusively.
Not only is he well educated and an abled communicator, but he also has an approach that is unfortunately rare in my medical experiences: he doesn’t just bring his mind into the patient rooms; he also brings his body. He does this by sharing (usually) relevant information about his own self and body when he is working with patients.
Because of this, I know that, like me, he has migraines. Like me, he was on a medical biography kick a few years ago. Like me, he has Crohn’s Disease. And like me, he indulges in bad reality tv when he needs a break. At times, this information is offered in a blatant manner. Other times, he is subtler. Overall, his ethos and ethics (Banks) are constructed in the minds and bodies of his patients because he has carefully constructed them in his mind and body.
I think I can imagine the risk and possible shame that is involved with Dr. Cooper bringing his whole self into patient rooms, and perhaps he is not embodied with each patient. But I have never seen or heard from other patients about him disembodied. Because of this approach, I have learned about his wife who is from Spain and enjoys interior design, his kids who are in and will be off to college soon, and his dog who tends to have fits of mania and then a kind of depressive crash. His giving (and/or my taking) sparks a subtle reciprocity that I rarely even have to consider.
I have considered the fact that he knows more about my body and my self than any other doctor that I have ever worked with. Because he is willing to take deliberate risks by bringing his body into the room, I find myself being more mindful and intentional out and inside this doctor’s office. I know that if I at least attempt to talk and be heard, he will attempt to listen and understand.
♮♮♮
I am thinking about him because I had a doctor’s appointment this morning at 8am. There was horrible traffic because of a car accident on the main street outside of my neighborhood, so a trip that is usually less than 5 minutes took more than 20. By the time I arrived and was checked in, the nurse observed my heart rate was around 122. (That’s not good.)
I assumed the most difficult part of the appointment would be getting there, but I was wrong.
<also not done yet>
These are some beginnings.
I feel this kind of writing kind of writing in my bones. That feeling reminds me that it is a risk, but it also reminds me that I am alive. Referencing my post about Jeff Grabill involving The Walking Dead: I’m not ashes. My body and self can be nouns and verbs, participating in meaningful ways and creating meaning for myself and others. And I am going to act, in what I often see as a d-bag manner, and quote myself in that blog because (at least right now) feel worthwhile: “Being alive doesn’t mean sitting and watching… on the sidelines and getting an idea or outline of what it means to be living. We will be involved in life in messy ways. Meaningful research reflects the idea that we ain’t ashes.”
*I will feel better if I go ahead and say upfront that the origin of the ideas represented in this post were the results of a collaboration… (but, then, what isn’t?) I engaged Dr. Will Banks in a conversation about his College English piece and how it may apply to my research, and while he listened more than talked, he asked significant questions and contributed important ideas to my thinking about this blog and my future research.