Title: Assistant Professor, English: Professional Writing
University: University of Memphis
Email: mollymkessler6@gmail.com
Twitter: mm_kessler
Website: www.mollymkessler.com
Description of Work:
I recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with my PhD in professional and technical writing, emphasis in rhetoric of health and medicine. This fall I am joining the faculty at the University of Memphis as an Assistant Professor of English. My work primarily focuses on chronic illness communication. And, by that I mean I am interested in how patients with chronic illnesses navigate a range of communicative contexts regarding their conditions.
Most recently my work has focused on theory-building, asking questions about how patients draw boundaries around their bodies, diseases, and identities to develop a stronger theoretical acumen for dealing with the fluidity of such boundaries. To help answer these questions, I’ve been exploring theories of ontology, agency, and materiality, and how these concepts fit within, challenge, and extend rhetorical work.
I’m hoping to continue with this line of work with my next project, which will trace the history and development of the ostomy, a medical technology commonly used by chronic illness patients. My goal is that this project will be enable me to not only provide scholarly insights for rhetorics of health and medicine and technical communication, but will help me to improve life experiences and communicative practices for patients.
Symposium Submission:
Examining Lived Experiences: Ontological Flattening and The Role of Language in Ontological Inquiry
Recent scholarship, broadly categorized under new materialisms, has advocated for reconfigured understandings of and approaches to ontology (for example, Mol, 2002; Graham, 2015; Rickert, 2013; Barad, 2007). This scholarship has particularly argued that many approaches to ontology rely on representationalism—on one hand are entities that represent, and on the other, entities that are represented. As new materialists point out, this representational approach becomes problematic for a variety of issues including reifying modernist dualisms and ignoring materiality in its own right (Graham, 2015; Barad 2007; Mol, 2002; Bennett, 2009). Of particular relevance to rhetoricians of health and medicine, new materialists and allied scholars have suggested that representationalism and subsequent focus on language, has positioned rhetorical scholarship to ignore bodies, materiality, and lived experiences (Graham, 2015; Mol, 2002; Gronvoll, 2013; Dolmage, 2014).
In response to these representationalist approaches, new materialists have proposed a variety of alternative ontological frameworks including agential realism (Barad, 2007), rhetorical-ontological inquiry (Graham, 2015), multiple ontologies theory (Mol, 2002), rhetorical ontology (Barnett & Boyle, 2016) and vibrant materiality (Bennett, 2009). Consistent across these approaches is a commitment to examining the diverse entities that stage rhetorical practices and ontologies—entities including but not limited to humans and language. Too, rather than assume ontological divisions, many of these approaches advocate that these diverse entities come into being and become meaningful through engagement with one another (e.g., entities including self, non-self, mind, body).
However, while these frameworks push rhetorical inquiry to move beyond representationalism, many questions remain, particularly within rhetorical studies of health and medicine. As much scholarship within rhetorical studies of health and medicine has focused on patient language and narrative, with what methods and theories can we best account for bodies, materiality, and patients’ lived experiences? What role does patient narrative play within these ontologies? If ontologies are done in practice, rather than represented via language, what is the role of language? How do particular practices become rhetorical? What beyond language can participate in rhetorical practices? And what approaches do we have to account for the diversity of entities that might influence such practices?
Working to answer these very questions and calibrate rhetorical studies with these new materialist approaches to ontology, I draw on Mol (2002), Graham (2015), and Barad (2007), to advocate for an “enactment” approach in which ontologies are staged through practices and lived experiences. Specifically, I introduce “ontological flattening” as a way to avoid assumed a priori ontological distinctions at the outset of inquiry. Such an approach requires rhetoricians to expand the artifacts we curate and study to include all entities that participate in patients’ lived experiences and rhetorical practices (including but not limited to language).
To build this approach, this article presents insights from a multi-year study of patient’s lived experiences with autoimmunity, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, and ostomies. Specifically, I examine a range of cases in which entanglements of patients, ostomies, lived experiences, discourse, social media, and more, stage diverse ontologies of the ostomy and the self. An ostomy is a type of medical technology used when all or part of the digestive tract has been removed due to disease or injury. Worn on the abdomen to collect digestive waste through an opening in the abdominal wall, ostomies present diverse challenges for patients regarding their lived experiences and where the boundaries and ontologies of self and ostomy lie. Further, this approach sheds light on the diverse entities and ontologies that give way to the multiple patient identities, (e.g., ostomy pouch wearer and ostomate, see Kessler, 2016).
This article ultimately contributes to the on-going conversation regarding how rhetoricians can best attend to patients’ lived experiences without abandoning the important role of language. Indeed, this article suggests when language engages within practices, often it becomes highly influential in the ontology staged. I offer enactments and ontological flattening as one methodology with which we might effectively attune our analyses to more diverse patient experience.
References
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Barnett, S. & Boyle, C. (2016). Introdcution: Rhetorical ontology, or how to do things with things. In Barnett, S. & Boyle, C. (Eds.) Rhetoric, through everyday things. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
Bennett, J. (2009). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Dunham, NC: Duke University Press.
Graham, S. S. (2015). The politics of pain medicine: A rhetorical-ontological inquiry. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Gronnvoll, M. (2013). Review Essay: Material Rhetorics Meet Material Feminisms. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 99(1), 98-113.
Mol, A. (2002). The body multiple: Ontology in medical practice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Rickert, T. (2013). Ambient rhetoric: The attunements of rhetorical being. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.