I began this week’s readings feeling unsure about the moral purity of Sacks’ work, but the three critiques — coupled with “A Surgeon’s Life” — have helped me toward a clearer position in favor of Sacks, though not necessarily because I agreed with what I read.
My most significant disagreement is not with an arguement we read directly, but with one that was paraphrased and deconstructed for us: Tom Shakespeare’s. I do not know much at all about Tom Shakespeare*, yet the (what seemed to me) strangely misdirected ire that he targeted at Sacks immediately placed him in an unfortunate category for me. He became akin to Michael Moore and Ann Coulter: an ideologue who makes exaggerated, misleading, or even deliberately false statements in order to further a cause. To my mind, this behavior undermines rather than supports the cause in question because it presents a detrimentally simplistic perspective. My impression from reading Couser’s quotations and paraphrases is that Shakespeare is more interested in drawing focus to the persistent marginalization of the disabled by the medical community than in the ethical strength of Sacks’ writing. He makes accusations that seem to have no bearing on Sacks’ actual writing. Shakespeare asserts that Sacks is interested primarily in profiting from his patients’ stories (qtd. in Couser 7), which, if sincere, seems like shallow guesswork made by a poor judge of character.
Sacks is clearly a kind-hearted and generous doctor. Nearly everything in Sacks’ writing has pointed toward a patient-first attitude that is not only willing but eager to find a living, relatable person in even the most severely disabled patients and subjects. In spite of Shakespeare's accusation that he writes to make us "marvel" at his "expertise," Sacks humbly admits his mistakes where he sees them: “Some things, one might think, would be completely out of the question [for someone with Tourette’s] — above all, perhaps, the intricate, precise, and steady work of a surgeon. This would have been my belief not so long ago” (Sacks 79). Admittedly, he is not always successful: his dismissal of Heidi's complaint in the department store shows some methodological coldness (Couser 5).
Fortunately, Sacks is constantly examining and re-evaluating his own perspective and assumptions about disease, and this is perhaps no more apparent than in the chapter from the book that we read for today, the same book that Shakespeare supposedly reviews. I agree with Couser that Shakespeare quite possibly “formed a negative opinion of Sacks on the basis of the earlier volume [The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat] and was unable or unwilling to qualify it in reviewing a subsequent book that is far more ambitious and accomplished” (Couser 8). Shakespeare judges Sacks only on his most sensationalist book, which would not look so much like that "high-brow freak show" (Couser 2) for which the likes of Alexander Cockburn despise him. This hollow attempt at an argument, which Couser generously calls "succinct" (Couser 2) is so glib and moronic that I am tempted to make fun of the Nation columnist's name in like fashion.
Shakespeare also complains that Sacks is monological in his presentation and fails to give the patient perspective sufficient space on the page. But I am more inclined to agree with Anne Hunsaker who says, “To compare Awakenings to the conventional [monological] medical history is to trace a movement away from "authoritative discourse" and toward dialogism.” Shakespeare’s complaint presumes an niche perspective of a general-audience writing; that is, he is preoccupied with his own idea of how many personal testimonials he would have liked to see. He is interested in the unfiltered perspective of the sick, not their doctor's attempt to synthesize patient and physician. Perhaps in Sacks, Shakespeare was looking more for direct quotations, but it seems that more generally he wanted a journalist to document the diseased or disabled perspective, not a neurological interpreter to weave a narrative case study, however humanist the tone.
* I do know that Tom Shakespeare is himself disabled, and I guiltily wonder if his own sense of marginalization (probably not a real word) or his affinity for the chronically ill gives him a distorted or instinctively confrontational perspective on the work of a doctor writing about his patients. I am guessing that this is an offensive idea to some, especially since I am presuming to psychoanalyze a person I have never met, but it is the only explanation I can think of for such a respected voice in the scientific community (I did a little internet research) voicing such irrational outrage against a man who has done much for a cause he also promotes (that being the social acceptance of the neurologically atypical or handicapped).
P.S. I have noticed that I have a habit of misspelling “Sacks” as “Sachs.” Perhaps this is from seeing “Goldman Sachs” in the news too many times. Please forgive the error.
I feel that a writer like Sacks is never able to predict how their books, plays, or films will be received. They have no way of telling how one person will see their art as opposed to another person. It is because of this inability to foresee future criticism, that it is hard to blame Sacks for how his books will be perceived. I actually believe that Sacks is trying to rid his patients of the pre-existing notions that they are “freaks.” He does not write about each patient solely by telling readers what is going on inside the minds of these non-neurotypical, diseased people, nor does he just explain in detail the strange physical habits each person has or the weird ways in which they just freeze up or cannot remember words. Instead, along with neuro-scientific explanations to each of his case studies, Sacks makes sure to focus on the personal lives of his patients. He writes about what his patients were like before their illness, what their family is like, how the patients feel about there illnesses, the loss or adjustment of self that each patient experiences, and the sacrifices and compensations made in order to live with their mental illness. He also gives the reader an image of the more obvious physical differences (if any) of the patient. Sacks combines all of this background in his case studies in order to enlighten the uninformed population of neurotypical people and to open their eyes to the differences and struggles in his patients.
ReplyDeleteI believe that Sacks writes his case studies, not in to be “the man who mistook his patients for a literary career” (Tom Shakespeare), but for the purpose of exposing his readers to people with mental illness who have “been historically marginalized” (Couser, 6). He is bringing these patients to his readers’ attention in order to humanize the illnesses; in order to give people a perspective on these patients that strays from the idea of “freak.” I understand that Sacks is giving his take on these patients and he very rarely allows for his patients to express themselves, but I don’t believe that he does this in order to show off or to advance in his literary career. I think that Sacks gives the perspective of a neuro-scientist who is observing his patients, but on a much more personal level. I do not see Sack’s writing as being exploitative or “freak show- like” in any way.
I suppose, when judging Sacks, we really have to ask: One, what is his motivation? Is the motivation “wrong”, legally, morally, etc?
ReplyDeleteTwo: Is Sacks succeeding at this motivation? Or are unexpected, unintentional symptoms coming into play?
If the central motivation of all this is: revealing the neurologically atypical to be much closer to neurotypical than we’d previously thought... well, then certainly there are some problems. If the big idea is simply to use that newly romanticized writing style to conjure up empathy and understanding for the neurotypical condition... this too brings up some trouble.
For then we get into:
Why use only the most extreme case studies and symptoms? Sacks clearly uses metaphor and character description to allow us to be both intimate with the individual and illness... but I think, if this were the central goal, there could/would be more overt connections to the “neurotypical” individual. “We all have a selective memory!” Sacks would say.
The extreme cases, coupled with the... at-times carnivalesque titles, certainly bring about that wonder spoken of previously.
And then there are the endings, which at times, as noted, fall unpleasantly back into medical speak, as Sacks admits to having no contact with the patient post case study. Whatever happened to them? He muses... Those postscripts are littered with thoughts on the illness, on other cases of the illness that could prove pertinent... Why end on the illness rather than the individual?
So: then perhaps we can say that the central motivation is to show extreme cases, and still make them relatable/understandable... as if to say: If you can conceive of this, then surely you can conceive of whatever minor neurological discrepancy you otherwise encounter in your life. He goes for the most bombastic case as a means of encompassing all other cases under it.
I get the sense, as well, that sometimes this wonder is almost intended to be celebrated. And here again we have another potential motivation: to fiddle with the conception of “healthy”, to strike a blow against the concept of “neurotypical” and reveal all to be messy and valueless. Sacks does take great efforts to illustrate beneficial characteristics to illnesses typically conceived of solely as negative. (Though interestingly, Shakespeare conceives this as a negative effect for the disabled, creating inappropriate expectations for who they are and how they should react to their conditions.)
The morality of these accounts are complex to be sure. Sacks’ intentions are genuine, sure. But the effectiveness? Sometimes it’s suspect.