[ Back to Index ]

THOUGHTS ABOUT ELAINE SHOWALTER AND THE FATE OF PWCS by Judith Fleet Wisdom

Elaine Showalter (ES) has entered stage left again, now trying to be cloaked in "allure." I'm not aware of who reads ALLURE, but it seems unlikely that she has selected for her present hostile diatribe a publication devoted to people who are serious about issues of freedom of speech, the nature of illness, or literary criticism.

But now that the word about the piece has gotten out to PWCs, once again, as with her original book and her readings, we, though on podiums less lofty, have, in cyberspace and letters to the editor, outdone her in wit, intellectual analysis, and decency.

Many of the posts and letters that have appeared on the PWC lists I read or participate in have very piercingly, insightfully, in various and sometimes quite eloquent ways pinpointed what ES did in her book and now does in her reaction to our estimation of it: that is seen it for what it is--a wantonly meanspirited and ill-informed use of the illness, CFS and those who are afflicted with it.

Why then do I write something further? So much good turf has already been quite adequately covered. But as I went over the whole long ES episode and again thought about why ES wrote that book in the first place and why she is now so surprised that she received such vehement objections to it (her characterizations of our reactions have earned her having been dubbed paranoid by some though I think we have to be careful not to stoop to her level and diagnose her--even though ES felt quite free to diagnose us!).

Many theories have been put forth as to why ES wrote that book. And though some if not all might be correct, I don't think we need to get into her motives. Her early childhood. Her insecurities.

Besides, you are on dangerous ground attributing motives to people. It is risky because you enter the area of data that you, as a stranger to her psyche, are likely to only have very partial and hypothetical knowledge of. And no matter how good you are at figuring out what makes people tick, this sort of parlor psychiatry--though fun and often insightful--can also be wrong and ultimately cruel. (Though I have no lost love for ES.)

I thought further about this burst of outrage on her part in her ALLURE article. And it really is of a piece with my reaction to the book itself. It has to do with what I always lamented as a trend within academia, though I myself loved the academic world of ideas and loved and still love some of its staunch inhabitants.

But that trend is what drove me from pursuing a career in it and, instead, finding work in medicine, which itself isn't immune to some similar tendencies, but with a difference. And this is at the nub of my particular analysis of Ms. Showalter's book and now her being so incensed at our reactions. Reaction which reveal that her hysterical objects are real people, with good minds, hard lives, a real illness, and broken hearts.

There is a kernel of intellectual and moral rot in academic intellectual circles that ES has been drawn into. There is a whole body of intellectual production, from within academia and even outside it (though often practiced by people whose training is deeply academic, that is not concerned with the search for the truth but, instead, a search for a new spin, a clever grab at a theory that allows the author to put things together in a bold, even shocking way, that will seduce readers, their own intellectual cronies (not true peers), and the publishing entrepreneurs they depend on (and who, in turn, depend on them).

It is not honest and searching analysis, it is narcissistic glitz under the cover of academic or journalistic analysis.

It does not move anything forward but the coffers of the publishers (sometimes) and the reputation of the author (sometimes). It does not make life more understandable. It does not point to remedy. It does not advance comprehension of complex subjects. In ES's case it doesn't even connect with a corpus of already extant work on the subjects she purports to speak to, if only to responsibly refute them! It has to do only with ego, competition, and a form of greed, both of reputation and money.

Which is why I've always seen this kind of behavior and idea explosion as entrepreneurial. The intellectual as the petty bourgeois. The small businessperson trying to become a J. Paul Getty. Or even try to move into the big store on the corner.

One of the reasons I never could remain in academia once I collected my education and degrees (though I knew and met there some very good and very smart people), was that this tendency always disgusted me. I loved the life of the intellect. But I couldn't stand that tendency despite the fact that it wasn't the only one I found there. But it has a way sometimes of taking over. I saw it in several departments in top-flight universities.

I sometimes felt it would be easier to be honest and remain close to the concrete, real world were I to open a button store, sell yard goods, yarn for knitting, produce.

So, why I was drawn to teaching in medicine. Because even though you see some of the same corruption there, the patients, illness, death, families, mortal struggle gave me enough of a world to counter that, a surroundings in which I could keep myself grounded in reality. I could immerse myself in the world of illness and healing and stay away from the academic end of things. Which is what I did, sometimes to the annoyance of my boss!

In the world of ideas, which is, perforce, separate from concrete goods and services , the entrepreneurial drive often is the cause for spinning disembodied, dishonest, disconnected-from-the world yarns. I wonder if that is where the word "spin," used so often to describe public relations acts of disinformation in government, comes from?

ES is part of that "grand" tradition of this corrupt intellectual entrepreneurial tendency.

For us, on the other hand, occupied, as we must be, with the search for cause and cure for our suffering, what draws us to it is our outrage that she'd use us, our hard, cold reality, which we live with night and day, to further her own career while making not one effort to connect with what this illness is really about.

Having made no such effort to learn of the body of research about us or even learn about us first hand and in depth, it is no wonder she can so easily dismiss with such outrage our opposition to her. I am quite sure she is very likely even surprised at the reasoned decency in many of the so-called hate mails she received from us. I'd even venture a guess that at night, when the lights are off, or in the morning when she faces the mirror, she knows or suspects that many of those emails and letters are not the product of viciously defensive fakes but real people hurt and angry by her irresponsible act of disinformation. But once dressed and ready to face her well-established and defended academic life and well-incomed career those thoughts fade.

Or am I giving her too much credit? That, I simply can't know. What I do know is that she still has a lot of work to do to produce an honest bit of analysis of the texts of our lives, be they in print, on the Internet, or best of all the result of intensive interviews analyzed in the context of the vast literature that moves our illness way, way out of the realm of hysteria and somaticization and into the area of a complex and often devastating physiological illness with also often awful interpersonal psychological, social, and financial consequences. Consequences that deteriorate with time. If she got those stories she wouldn't get "hy-stories."

January 27, l998

[ Back to Index ]