3 research outputs found
EDUCATIONAL RESPONSES TO THE CANCER INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX PINK WAR MACHINE: THEORIZING GENDER INSUBORDINATION FROM AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF BREAST AND GYNECOLOGICAL CANCERS
Premised upon John Deweyâs contention that dualist notions of minds isolated and elevated from bodies are an âevilâ perpetuated in education (1916), this study applies Jane Roland Martinâs theories of education as encounter (2011), education as a lifelong series of culture crossings (2006), and education as the transmission of both cultural liabilities and assets (2002) to curriculum theorizing from womenâs cancer narratives as educational autobiographies (Couser, 1997; Lorber and Moore, 2002; Frank, 2013; Dewey, 1916; Pinar, 1975; Franzosa, 1992; Martin, 2011; Laird 2017, 2018). Informed also by analyses of modes of body discipline and conditions affecting the well-being of bodies in communities (Foucault 1982; Friedman, 1989; Bartky, 1990; Young, 1994; Butler 2006; Shusterman 2008; Warren 2011), this textual study focuses upon the U.S. âcancer-industrial complexâ (Ehrenreich, 2001), the conglomeration of medical and research institutions, government and nonprofit agencies, and commercial corporations that shape patient and public health education for women with breast and gynecological cancers (BGC) as a âpink war machineâ that fosters cisgender heteronormativity and gender subordination (GS). Education for GS includes three practicesââpink commerce,â medical authoritarianism, and âpink narrativesââwhich compel BGC patientsâ conformity to gender norms, violate their bodies, suppress their voices, and limit and distort their learning.
This textual study theorizes âGender Insubordinationâ (GI) from close reading of eight autobiographical narratives (Campion, 1972; Kushner, 1975; Rollin, 1976; Lorde, 1980; Lucas, 2004; Ho, 2006; Steingraber, 2010; Gubar, 2012) that voice womenâs critical responses to gender-subordinating, pink war training. This studyâs thesis is that GI is a self-educating practice, and collectively, that GI narratives can serve as counter-curriculum for revealing, resisting, and redressing pink-war-machine miseducation. Womenâs diverse narratives express GI educational thought of three kinds: emergent, instigative/informer, and restorative/reformer. In all cases, four GI actions respond directly to gender-subordinating patient education: Refusing to comply with gender-normed behaviors, developing practices to listen to and sustain bodies, educating others to recognize pink war miseducation, and claiming voice for self-advocacy. Commending Deweyâs insight that education may enhance or harm health (1916), this study closes with a plea to broaden educational studies to apply its disciplines of interpretive, critical, and normative inquiry to health care as a site of vital teaching and learning