Editors' Introduction to Volume 8 issue 4

Editors' Introduction to Volume 8 issue 3

Editors' Introduction to Rhetoric of Health and Medicine 8-1.

Introduction to RHM 7.4

Editors' introduction to 7.3.

Introduction to 7.2

Editors' Introduction to Issue 6.4

Editors' Introduction to vol. 6 issue 3

Editors' Introduction to 6.1.

Editors' Introduction to 5.4.

Editors' Intro

Editors' introduction to 5.1

Editors introduction to volume 4, issue 3 by J. Blake Scott, Cathryn Molloy, and Lisa Melonçon.

As the introduction to this issue makes clear, the ethical exposure essays we include here are the start of an ongoing initiative in the journal—to include focused sections of shorter pieces on critical threads or matters of concern in ongoing RHM work, in this case ethical conundra encountered in practice-level enactments of methodologies. In setting the tone for this special section, we now attempt to parse an “ethics in praxis” that is characterized by situational, embodied, and reflexive orientations rather thanby attributes more common in virtue ethics. This emphasis on praxis allows us to put forward an idea of ethics in and for RHM that is responsive to critique as we articulate it in the overall introduction to this issue: as kairos-driven and attuned to crises as they unfold in the present and as they anticipate and offer opportunities to “play” at various imagined futures.

When we began drafting this issue introduction, extending from a previous introduction in which we committed “to do more and better in cultivating, sponsoring, publishing, and promoting scholarship that addresses racism and interlocking systems of oppression as public health (and/or other health or medical) issues,” we knew we wanted to continue to foster a space in which RHM scholars could ask new and newly exigent questions born out of the rupture of our current moment of swirling, interconnected crises, some longstanding and others novel.

Kelly Pender’s Being at Genetic Risk: Toward a Rhetoric of Care makes an important contribution to scholarship in the rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM); rhetoric of science, technology, and med...

Introduction to Volume 4, Number 1

Introduction to Volume 4, Number 1

Pandemics have a way of humbling those with recognized expertise for responding to them. The current COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into relief medical and other experts' uncertainties about models for predicting the spread of cases and deaths, patterns of symptoms and morbidities associated with the virus, the responses of various publics to official health directives and unofficial (in cases harmful) advice, the longer-term economic and political fallout of the ongoing pandemic, the proliferation of conspiracy theories, and so on. At the same time, pandemics like COVID-19 have a way of reminding us that expertise, like uncertainty, can be a fluid, distributed quality, as we have looked to and learned from the experiential knowledge of patients and their caregivers, the cultural insight and documentation of artists of various types, the ingenuity of fellow citizens in designing novel and work-around forms of protection, and other sources not typically associated with medical expertise. Indeed, we can readily point to the harms of authority figures or institutions assuming too much agency and failing to listen to, leverage the knowledge of, and coordinate responses with others.

Relying on the case of a mixed-methods study centered on patients’ strategies for establishing their credibility in clinical conversations, this essay argues that the more intentional and effective the participant recruitment and the more specific the inquiry, the more likely technical communication and rhetoric of science researchers are to encounter potentially powerful partners through which they might get and analyze compelling data and, thus, gain engaged audiences outside of their disciplines.

Drawing on our experiences with qualitative research involving health and medical topics to which we have a personal connection, this dialogue asks scholars in RHM to consider key methodological issues in embodied research by exploring: the choice to take up inquiries with which we have personal connections; the ethics of representation within these projects; and determining if, how, when, and to what degree we should reveal these connections in the research write-ups themselves. Our conversation is characterized by a “heuristic orientation”—defined as intuitive, creative, and generative. We conclude by offering a heuristic tool for researchers to use as they make crucial decisions in embodied research in RHM.

If I were to attempt to summarize S. Scott Graham’s formidable volume The Politics of Pain Medicine: A Rhetorical-Ontological Inquiry with the briefest of pithy quotes from within its pages, I migh...

Treatment for Dissociative Identity Disorder aims to integrate diverse narratives into a coherent whole. However, no compelling reason exists to privilege a cohesive narrative; in fact, treatment may at times introduce false memories in an attempt to construct such a narrative. This essay critically examines dominant conceptions of memory and consciousness based on logic and coherence in order to argue for the value and validity of fragmented narratives as a legitimate rhetoric.

This essay uses data from a field-based study to describe the everyday rhetorical performances through which ethos is established when the orator’s credibility has been compromised by stigma born of chronic mental illness. These strategies, called “recuperative ethos,” include displays of astuteness, references to strong human connections, and appeals to religious topoi. Further, the essay describes innovative rhetorical performances, called “agile epistemologies,” which include logical contradiction, metonymic parallels, enthymemes, and expansive views on human agency. Taken together, these terms use the voices and experiences of mentally ill participants to add important insight into the rhetoric of mental healthcare and the rhetoric of medicine, health, and wellness.

The malcliché, far from being the throwaway material of unfortunate misspeak, and far from being the ugly stepchild of something already detestable, can be a vital source of new semantic complexity as well as an unconscious artistic creation worthy of our attention.