Preface

In Recovering Bodies, Couser (1997) coined the term autopathography to categorize autobiographical narratives of illness or disability. The book explored illness narrative as life writing and its potential to engage contemporary politics of the body (pp. 14-15) and to represent an entire life "to the degree that the writer identifies the self with the body" (p. 14). Recovering Bodies devoted considerable attention to subjectivity on conditions that "have been […] particularly stigmatizing or marginalizing" (p. 15), although mental illness narratives were omitted, partly because "dysfunctions like schizophrenia and depression raise complex and largely independent issues—such as the representations of altered consciousness—that [Couser] was ill-equipped to address" (p. 17).

Since Recovering Bodies, Disability Studies scholars and others who experience mental disability (Price, 2011) have contributed a wealth of conventional first-person narratives on mental disability that often rebut stigmatic and oppressive discourses. Donaldson (2002), for example, describes how people with mental disabilities are unjustly blamed for their conditions and considered weak-willed and cognitively inferior, and Nicki (2001) avows that we are routinely ridiculed for not just "snapping out of it." Jamison's (1996) pioneering concern over "coming out" as an academic experiencing mental disability has been expanded by others, including Clark (2007) who suggests that "there is no illness, except perhaps AIDS, that bears the shame still attached to mental illness and that is hidden so well in the academy" (p. 128). Such personal narratives bolster other humanities research, such as Price's (2011) analysis of rhetorics of mental disability in academia and research on performance and performing arts projects that involve mental disability (Eisenhauer, 2010a, 2010b; Johnston, 2008; Kuppers, 2003, 2007, 2008), as well as scientific research on stigma and mental disability (Boyd, Katz, Link, & Phelan, 2010; Corrigan, 2004; Corrigan & Penn, 1999; Corrigan & Watson, 2002; Hinshaw, 2007; Link & Phelan, 2001; Livingston & Boyd, 2010; Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Pescosolido, 2000; Rüsch et al., 2009; Wahl, 1995, 1999).

To elaborate this literature, I employ autopathography as a methodological frame for disseminating creative autoethnographic research on discourses of mental disability. Bochner and Ellis (2002) characterize autoethnography as a kind of ethnography, a qualitative research methodology that socially contextualizes the story rather than looking at its author. Autoethnography gazes back and forth between internal vulnerability and external, social and cultural aspects of personal experience (Ellis in Scott-Hoy, 2002). Artist Scott-Hoy (2002) uses autoethnography to merge conventional methods of painting, performance, storytelling, and research. She equates autoethnography to artmaking practices that "[explore] the experience from within, then from without" (p. 283).

Like Scott-Hoy, I use autoethnography as "a way of further involving the viewers" of my artworks (p. 283), and I deliberately weave images and words as a performative method, an act of hybridity (Picart, 2002) to "challenge comfortable binaries through the use of intertwining genres" (p. 259). The relationship of text and image, and the variety of images which includes everyday photographs, visual journal work, and completed artworks, reflect my intent to explore the interstices "between identities and places" (Brueggemann, 2009) as a metaphor for recognizing disability as a matter of complex embodiment (Siebers, 2008). Like other Disability Studies artist-authors who experience mental disability (Eisenhauer, 2009; Roman, 2009), this essay explores dynamic possibilities for visual culture and art production, which are underrepresented in Disability Studies (Derby, 2012). My intention is not simply to relay, read, or respond to my art and vernacular images, but to reuse, reread, and revitalize them with and through life writing. By blurring disciplinary boundaries through hybridity, I aspire toward transdisciplinary research that refutes academic battles over the supremacy of text/image, science/humanities/arts, and scholarly research/creative activity. The hybridity of my essay reflects Foucault's (1965/1988) treatment of the arts as a homogeneous entity, which underlies his thesis (1964/1995, 1965/1988) that the collusion of madness and the arts—in Artaud, Nietzsche, and Van Gogh—dismantles the normalizing myth that reason begets creativity and productivity.

1 a: an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance b: lack of intention or necessity: chance <met by accident rather than by design>

2 a: an unfortunate event resulting especially from carelessness or ignorance b: an unexpected and medically important bodily event especially when injurious <a cerebrovascular accident> c: an unexpected happening causing loss or injury which is not due to any fault or misconduct on the part of the person injured but for which legal relief may be sought d —[sic] used euphemistically to refer to an involuntary act or instance of urination or defecation

3: a nonessential property or quality of an entity or circumstance <the accident of nationality>

                                 —Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (2012)

1. Incidents and Accidents

There was an incident …

Actually, there were many—as far back as I can remember. But this one was pivotal; it marked a shift from unmanageable stress to full-scale obsession with suicide.

My first year of doctoral studies was going well, except for the problems. I hadn't wanted to move back to Ohio, for one. Park City was everything I had dreamed of, and I'd built my life around skiing, mountain bike racing, and the solemn liturgy and music of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake. I worried about leaving, and while I told myself it would only be temporary, I knew I'd never come back. But it had to be done—Lori hated Utah. Besides, I wanted a PhD, a trophy more prestigious than all of my race trophies combined, and Ohio State was the best choice. The best offer. The best reputation. Lori could work.

At my last Mass at the Cathedral, I wept. There would be no more incense, Gregorian chant, or scholarly homilies. I sobbed on bike rides. I would lose the wilderness, the deep powder snow in Jupiter Bowl, the pristine backcountry lakes, the national parks, the golden aspen rustling in the winds. Ohio lacked natural beauty and the perfect balance of religion, exercise, scenery, time to think, and fragrant pines. And the painkillers—legally prescribed, of course—were no longer making things beautiful.

The move was rough. The U-Haul broke down several times and we were towed back to Salt Lake. There we were—Lori, me, and my brother Bill, following a giant tow truck with our 24-foot moving van and our Acura on a full car trailer. Our worldly possessions stretched across I-80 in a perverse American tribute to the Australian road train, the big engine that couldn't, dragged back down the mountain that it failed to overcome. To me it was a simple metaphor: the move was not meant to be.

My first quarter was great—the excitement of debate, new ideas, big dreams, drugs—I had it all, except the things I had lost. I was having trouble concentrating, so I underwent extensive testing. Some of the news was devastating. "There is some good news," my tester said. "Your IQ is above average." I looked at the results in dismay. It couldn't be right—it was terrible! Maybe it was the painkillers. No, I was a fake, an imposter. I was fucking stupid! I had heard it many times growing up and I knew it was true. Then my sister Liz almost died—some kind of rare pneumonia. She lost her baby but she survived. Our prayers saved her! Lori was also struggling from her own depression caused by the stress of working in a hostile urban high school and the move.

The woman who did my testing wasn't sure what I had. Maybe ADD. Definitely post-traumatic stress disorder from my childhood. Generalized anxiety disorder was most likely the main thing, but she couldn't say because she only did testing. I never mentioned the drugs. Then I met with a psychiatrist who didn't bother to look at the test results. He asked me some questions: "Any history of mental illness in your family?" Quite a bit. "What kind? Who? Do you feel sad?" I didn't. "Any difficulty sleeping?" My whole life. "I see. Do you have trouble concentrating? Do you have friends? Hmmm …. What about your childhood?" He shook his head. "You're a tough one to diagnose—little bit of everything. Well, what you have is bipolar disorder." Bipolar disorder. Just like that. I was bipolar. My grandfather had had it. Liz had it—well, she had something. He gave me a mood stabilizer. When I was stable, I'd be able to focus. But it didn't work. So I was prescribed Ativan® to calm me down. I was working fifteen hours a day, every day, so I tried Strattera® for concentration, then Adderall®.

In the spring, I took too many hours and one professor hated my work. I got a B+ on my first paper. I knew what that meant. So I put everything I had into the final project. I was burning through the drugs faster, trying to quit before it got really serious. I pushed and pushed. I wrote the best paper of my life, surely good enough to redeem my grade. In a few days I would rest in Vegas, crashing hard from the drugs, tired from the stress and dark fits of rage. I would be relieved to see my final grade, which would prove my worth. Probably an A-, hopefully an A …

I began documenting the dark episodes in my visual journal.

I repeatedly asked for antidepressants, but my psychiatrist was convinced that I needed to be stabilized. I was spiraling out of control, but he refused to listen. "You should become a professor of bipolar disorder," he told me, "because with bipolar it's for the rest of your life." Was this some kind of accident? An unfortunate event resulting especially from carelessness or ignorance? Was it an unexpected and medically important bodily event? Injurious? I needed a new psychiatrist, but I couldn't find one. Even OSU turned me away. I had no options.

My peers and family were worried, too. We had lengthy conversations debating my situation. I reasoned that some people are perpetually unhappy, and why should anyone have to live who doesn't want to? Maybe I should quit school and move back to Park City. Church was the answer. Church wasn't the answer. This was all my fault (Saks, 2007). But what alarmed people more than our conversations was my art. I don't know how many people saw my experimental video Disorder, but it was more than I invited. Bill loved the video and Lori got it, but my aunt panicked and she started calling me daily—hadn't she read my artist's statement?

Here is a brief synopsis of Disorder (Figure 5): The first five minutes is footage of me preparing an omelet: peppers, onions … firecrackers! It eventually explodes. The middle section reveals "disorder" through private everyday behaviors, such as hitting myself because I hate my appearance. This transitions into the end section in which I sing "Deposuit potentes" from Bach's Magnificat: "He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly" (International Committee on English in the Liturgy, 1975, p. 669). The camera traverses dark hallways, flashing images of a storm and an apple impaled with pills, and concludes with me floating dead in a bathtub. The video, like much of my work, attempts to transgress seriousness and crisis with untimely humor and whimsy. My artist's statement explained this, but people refused to understand.