'Pressured Speech': The Work of Narrative in Manic-Depressive Storytelling Open Access
Levy, Alyssa R. (2009)
Abstract
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Abstract
'Pressured Speech':
The Work of Narrative in Manic-Depressive Storytelling
By Alyssa R. Levy
' Pressured Speech' investigates how, why, and to what
effect narrative matters to
people living with manic depression and other mental illnesses. It
uses 'the work of
narrative' as an analytical substrate in examining a subset of
fiction, memoir, and
performative personal narrative that exemplifies manic-depressive
storytelling's
distinctive verve and politico-therapeutic value. This collection
of stories reveals that
manic-depressive storytellers most often employ narrative to
negotiate identity and
selfhood, epistemic and embodied experience, and political
subjectivity once transformed
by the illness's attendant socio-medical processes. 'Pressured
Speech' registers these
indices of narrative function in executing its textual analyses
along three axes of critical
inquiry that deliberate the following questions: What does storying
manic-depressive
illness do, materially and metaphysically, for people living
with the illness? What kinds
of storytelling best serve these ends and under what conditions?
How might the work of
narrative revealed in manic-depressive storytelling be extrapolated
for use in
contemporary mental health politics, policy, and praxis?
In mapping its selected texts' unique responses to these guiding
questions,
'Pressured Speech' sets some general parameters for all
types of progressive narrative
enterprise in mental health domains. It determines that
storytelling modalities that are
dynamic, didactic, and morally and politically self-aware best
serve the work of narrative
it explicates in its materials of study. Furthermore, 'Pressured
Speech' concludes that
individual and institutional mental health storytellers'
actualization of narrative's political
and therapeutic potential rests in their recognition of 'the
ethical, 'the political,' and 'the
interdisciplinary' as imminent venues and values for twenty-first
century narrative work.
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'Pressured Speech':
The Work of Narrative in Manic-Depressive Storytelling
By
Alyssa R. Levy
B.A., University of Texas at Austin, 2000
M.A., University of Texas at Austin, 2003
.
Advisor: Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Ph.D.
A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the
James. T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory
University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in Women's Studies
2009
Table of Contents
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Introduction:
The Work of Narrative in Manic-Depressive Storytelling 1
Chapter Two
Selfhood, Identity, and the Bipolar Storyteller:
Terri Cheney's Manic 32
Chapter Three
'Hallelujah Anyhow':
Bebe Moore Campbell's 72 Hour Hold 71
Chapter Four
Hysterical Strength:
Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking 109
Chapter Five
Mad People Without Instruments 142
Chapter Six
Conclusion 171
Bibliography 206
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