'Pressured Speech': The Work of Narrative in Manic-Depressive Storytelling Pubblico

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

About this Dissertation

Rights statement

• Permission granted by the author to include this thesis or dissertation in this repository. All rights reserved by the author. Please contact the author for information regarding the reproduction and use of this thesis or dissertation.

School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Women's Studies
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Women's Studies Health Sciences, Mental Health
Parola chiave	performative writing mental health narrative ethics
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie, Emory University
Committee Members	Druss, Benjamin G, Emory University Hall, Pamela M, Emory University

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