In the last three decades, stand-up comedians have played an increasingly prominent role in the production and distribution of biomedical knowledge. As advocates and fundraisers for disease constituencies, patients and caregivers sharing intimate accounts of suffering and loss, and spokespersons for state health institutions addressing disease disparities, stand-up comedians often serve as the public faces of disease and suffering. This is part of a broader proliferation of biomedical knowledge production that increasingly includes popular, and not just institutional, sources. Drawing on and expanding biomedicalization theory, this dissertation examines how the emergence of stand-up comedy in the contemporary US health discourse reflects critical changes in how we talk about illness and suffering, and how we understand health as a personal, moral responsibility. Defining ‘health’ in the United States today is as much about ideology as it is about well-being. From the imperative to be positive and cheerful in the so-called culture of ‘cancer survivorship’ to the targeting of high-risk racial minorities through coded signifiers of race and difference, the language we use to talk about health and illness is deeply constrained. This dissertation examines three key sites where stand-up comedy participates in this ideological negotiation: illness narratives performed by professional comedians, self-help organizations that promote ‘therapeutic humor’ as a care of the self, and public service announcements that use stand-up comedy to inculcate self-surveillance behaviors within high-risk target populations. Employing discourse analysis and an ethnography that includes participant-observation and semi-structured interviews, I examine how and why stand-up comedy emerged as an important technology of biomedical knowledge production. From popular discourses around race and gender to class and politics, stand-up comedy has long functioned as a site of social mediation. I am interested in what the emergence of stand-up comedy in the US health discourse uncovers about how we talk about illness, and how that is changing. Located at the intersection of media studies, science and technology studies (STS), and the cultural study of health, my dissertation explores how biomedical knowledge production has become an increasingly popular practice, and what the emergence of stand-up comedy within this transformation reveals about ongoing transformations in the pursuit of health and this mode of comic performance.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Shirley Sun;
Ann Hui Ching;
(2021)
Social Systems Matter: Precision Medicine, Public Health, and the Medical Model
(/isis/citation/CBB879164513/)
Article
Scheffler, Robin Wolfe;
(2014)
Following Cancer Viruses through the Laboratory, Clinic, and Society
(/isis/citation/CBB001421641/)
Chapter
Shelley W. Chan;
(2016)
Narrating Cancer, Disabilities, and aids: Yan Lianke’s Trilogy of Disease
(/isis/citation/CBB974132031/)
Article
Howell, Joel D.;
(2011)
Coronary Heart Disease and Heart Attacks, 1912--2010
(/isis/citation/CBB001230162/)
Article
Nicholas Binney;
(2018)
The function of the heart is historically contingent
(/isis/citation/CBB696611235/)
Article
Anderson, Warwick;
(August 2013)
Objectivity and its discontents
(/isis/citation/CBB740151278/)
Thesis
Natalie Brooke Aviles;
(2016)
Cancer Research in Situ: Organizational Cultures of Vaccine Innovation in the National Cancer Institute's Directed Virus-Cancer Programs, 1961-2008
(/isis/citation/CBB062240530/)
Book
Robert Aronowitz;
(2015)
Risky Medicine: Our Quest to Cure Fear and Uncertainty
(/isis/citation/CBB544783309/)
Chapter
Joseph E. Davis;
(2016)
Introduction: Holism against Reductionism
(/isis/citation/CBB984513451/)
Article
Anya Plutynski;
(2021)
Is cancer a matter of luck?
(/isis/citation/CBB401173230/)
Article
Melania Borgo;
(2017)
The Heart Burial and the History of an Emblematic Organ
(/isis/citation/CBB133288512/)
Article
James Wintrup;
(2020)
Speaking with vampires and angels: The ambivalent afterlives of Christian humanitarianism in rural Zambia
(/isis/citation/CBB321412152/)
Article
Lisa Lindén;
(July 2021)
Moving Evidence: Patients’ Groups, Biomedical Research, and Affects
(/isis/citation/CBB080289080/)
Book
Katherine Mason;
(2016)
Infectious Change: Reinventing Chinese Public Health After an Epidemic
(/isis/citation/CBB907982802/)
Article
Harrison, Henrietta;
(2012)
Rethinking Missionaries and Medicine in China: The Miracles of Assunta Pallotta, 1905--2005
(/isis/citation/CBB001202139/)
Book
Carsten Timmermann;
(2020)
Moonshots at Cancer: The Roche Story
(/isis/citation/CBB657158836/)
Article
Morgan Meyer;
(2022)
Taking responsibility, making irresponsibility: Controversies in human gene editing
(/isis/citation/CBB072011815/)
Article
Howard Phillips;
(2020)
’17, ’18, ’19: religion and science in three pandemics, 1817, 1918, and 2019
(/isis/citation/CBB296469942/)
Article
Clay Davis;
(December 2020)
Homo adhaerens: Risk and adherence in biomedical HIV prevention research
(/isis/citation/CBB559629478/)
Article
Mathangi Krishnamurthy;
(March 2020)
Navigating the Body Multiple: Biomedicine, Genetics, and Sex/Gender in the Lives of CAH Patients (Research Note)
(/isis/citation/CBB524326627/)
Be the first to comment!