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The Ability Contract The Ideological, Affective, and Material Negotiations of Women Living with HIV

Day, Allyson L

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Womens Studies.
This dissertation project theorizes the ability contract as a means for understanding the experience of women living with HIV in the United States. I understand the ability contract as the triad of labor-utility-predictability that is central to the construction of the liberal citizen-subject, extending the work of John Locke, Carol Pateman, Charles Mills and Shannon Winnubst. The theory of this project is rooted in my original field research; during the 2012-2013 academic year, I spent six months facilitating a reading group for women living with HIV. Together, we read popular memoirs written by women with what I have termed invisible episodic illness, such as lupus, early stage m.s., chronic depression and HIV. Participants in the reading group used these books as a catalyst for discussing their daily negotiations of labor, family and the medical industrial complex in relation to disability identity. I also conducted one-on-one preliminary and follow-up interviews. What I found was that my research participants all resisted a disability identification, despite many of them accessing disability resources. They also all closely connected their identity not to their current employment conditions, but to their prediction of how they will be able to work in the future. This prediction of becoming a wage-earner was the primary reason for their dis/identification with disability. What explains this close connection of disability with future labor? And what is the relationship between labor and disability at the intersection of gender, race, class, and (medical) citizenship? In order to address these questions, I developed a three-tier reading group research method; in my dissertation, I analyze life narratives of women living with HIV, both the narratives of the women in my group and published narratives; I also analyze the reading group reception to those life narratives; finally, I re-read social contract theory alongside American multiracial feminisms, disability theory, autobiographical theory, and affect theory to understand the Ability Contract as affective, material and ideological; this interpretation leads me to an analysis of narrative medicine, where I argue against the fetishization of narrative within the medical industrial complex.
Wendy Smooth, PhD (Committee Co-Chair)
Brenda Brueggemann, PhD (Committee Co-Chair)
Shannon Winnubst, PhD (Committee Member)
296 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Day, A. L. (2014). The Ability Contract The Ideological, Affective, and Material Negotiations of Women Living with HIV [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1395399748

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Day, Allyson. The Ability Contract The Ideological, Affective, and Material Negotiations of Women Living with HIV. 2014. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1395399748.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Day, Allyson. "The Ability Contract The Ideological, Affective, and Material Negotiations of Women Living with HIV." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1395399748

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)