Abstract:
Health myths are health belief systems which prescribe behaviors thought to be health positive by myth-subscribers which are, according to Western medicine, health negative or neutral. These myths become part of individual, family, and community ethnomedical constructions and can have lasting negative health impacts. This project aims to better understand how health myths become lasting and pervasive through a Foucauldian genealogy of the vaccine cause autism (VCA) myth. Using a variety of critical rhetorical lenses--including mythic analysis, the narrative paradigm, circulation theory, performativity, and collective memory--this project analyzes six cases across three realms. In the realm of popular culture Jenny McCarthy's brand-system and the narratives of autism in TIME and Parenting Magazines are analyzed; in the realm of medicine the diagnostic history of autism in the DSM and foundational articles and the circulation of peer-reviewed scientific articles that arguably link autism to environmental triggers are analyzed; and in the institutional realm Congressional hearings on VCA and the collective memory of autism crafted by non-profits on both side of the VCA debate are analyzed. These analyses demonstrate the commonalities across cases and realms, as well as the points of contradiction, offering a better picture for the ways that macro-social hegemonic discourses coupled with pathos-steeped narratives bind together through sticky affect. This binding creates a bloc of discourses that circulate and re-circulate through popular culture, medicine, and institutions such as government creating many entry points for community construction around VCA. The implications of this project include new insights on affective stickiness, further development of the links between Foucault and critical rhetoric, and a better understanding of popular culture's place in medical discourses.
