Kimberly K. Emmons, Black Dogs and Blue Words: Depression and Gender in the Age of Self-Care

Abstract

Beginning with the now-familiar (though still evocative) figures of depression— Churchill’s ‘‘black dog’’ and the ephemeral ‘‘blues’’—Kimberly Emmons’ 2009 text on depression and gender seeks to remind us that, after all, words matter. On one hand, no one would argue with the premise. Of course words matter. Many a schoolchild can testify to the fact that words can even hurt you, all sticks and stones aside. What is most shocking in Emmons’ narrative, therefore, is the revelation that even in this extraordinarily textual age, an age in which words are texted, IMed, posted on Facebook, and literally surrounding us in constant if transient digital strokes, we can still forget their formative (as well as informative) power. By exploring the language patterns that ‘‘constitute the discourse of depression,’’ and by delineating the difference between self-doctoring and self-care, Emmons presents the persuasive power of depression as a rhetorical illness—that is, a real and tangible condition that is both constructed and made recognizable by language. This language itself has constitutive powers; the words of patients, clinicians and pharmaceutical commercials do more than reveal illness—they construct ‘‘new, typically gendered, illness identities’’ that affect strategies of diagnosis and intervention (p. 7). Obviously, terming an illness rhetorical in nature requires explanation. Aware of the usually negative connotations rhetoric implies (as manipulative discourse), Emmons spends a lengthy first chapter describing not only depression’s linguistic resources but also the concept of rhetorical illness more generally. Repeatedly referring to a ‘‘discourse of depression,’’ Emmons situates language as a cultural phenomenon in need of deciphering, and rhetorical analysis as a useful tool offering strategies for maintaining ‘‘complex, situationally sensitive knowledge of health and illness’’ (p. 14). Depression, in Emmons formulation, is a rhetorical phenomenon that is (1) saturated by language through cycles of storytelling, (2) revealed by