Crosby, C.A Body, Undone. Living on After Great Pain. New York and London: New York University Press. 2016. 232pp. £16 (hbk) ISBN 978–1479833535

Abstract

It is not often that a book comes along that can be read on many different levels: philosophical reflection on pain, embodiment and the loss of bodily function; scholarly reflection on feminism and lesbian love, and a cross between philosophy, literature and theology. Reviewing this book raises several challenges because, even though it is engrossing and easy to read, the complex interweaving of all these strands makes it difficult to discuss. It is, however, to Crosby's merit that she manages to bring all these aspects together, and only highlighting the social science and philosophical aspects would do it a disservice. Crosby is Professor of English and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the Wesleyan University in Connecticut. In 2003, just after she had turned 50, an accident left her paralysed from the neck down. The book is her account of what happened during and after the event, and how she gradually learned to live a new life in a new body. It is an auto-ethnographic narrative on existing and living after spinal cord injury, and a meditation on the personal experience of pain, on family bonds, on growing up as a lesbian in the 1970s and on combining all these aspects in the person of Christina Crosby. Crosby's account is phenomenological and rooted in the feminist philosophy of embodiment: how it feels to have a body, to be a body and to have that body destroyed and embodied again. The book is divided into 18 chapters. In the first six chapters, Crosby discusses her experiences in light of embodiment theory and how the accident changed her relationship not only with her loved ones, but with the world in itself. How, then, are relationships changed when the body is suddenly paralysed? Her phenomenological description of how the body becomes an alien, lost in space, so to speak, gives us insight into how it actually feels when one's body becomes a stranger: the sensation of feeling cold gel on your body as if it was fire, the fear of knowing why there are so many braces in the mouth that hold a jaw together that was broken in a thousand places, and the feeling of being unable to control bodily functions. She writes about the first weeks in intensive care, then in the rehabilitation hospital, interspersed with political thoughts on the ‘care nexus’ and the unpalatable fact that the underpaid people who we rely on for our care when can no longer look after ourselves themselves struggle to lead a decent life. The book's theoretical roots are in the feminist literature on embodiment—Elisabeth Grosz’ work is mentioned several times—and the work on personhood and gender proposed by Judith Butler. As such, the book is a unique account of what embodiment actually feels like, as well as the classical American narrative of ‘fighting and overcoming’ the greatest challenge of all: of having lost your body and gaining a different embodied self. The experience of the rehabilitation of her body and the restructuring of herself form the middle part of the book (chapters seven to fifteen). These chapters incorporate descriptions of herself in the past as living as a lesbian and dressing up as sexually positive, and her experience of being mistaken for a man when she sits in a wheelchair after the incident, genderless and sexless. Interwoven is also the story of her brother Jeff, who was her rival in puberty, and how the fact that he was allowed to be a boy and she was not had driven a wedge between them. Jeff was diagnosed with MS in his late twenties and was quadriplegic by the time Christina had her accident. So, ironically, they were reunited in pain and disability, and Crosby observes that ‘paralysis trumped gender’ (p. 94). The last few chapters deal with Crosby's return to life, albeit one different from the one she led before the accident. Crosby interweaves the fear of ageing with ‘an undone body as a cripple’ (p. 189) with academic debates on the horror story, ‘a literary genre governed not by rational exposition but rather by affective intensification and bewilderment’ (p. 189). The book makes for interesting reading because it propels philosophy into the lived realm, into the lived experience of vulnerability and pain, but also of recovery and living on. As such, it is also proof that the philosophy of embodiment is not just an academic concept but can be translated directly into the everyday reality of suffering and caring. For the sociological reader, the book contributes most to the discussion on embodiment and personhood, be it pain, the loss of bodily functions, and, indeed, the pleasures of sex and what it means to be touched. It should also be recommended reading for healthcare practitioners in training, especially nursing students and future medical doctors.