Graham, S.S. (Book manuscript). A Nonmodern Pain Science: Agency and Ontologies in the Medical-Industrial Complex.
Graham, S.S., & Teston, C. Persuasive strategies in cancer care and continuing medical education. Ongoing Research Project.
Pepin, J. & Graham, S.S. Conflicts of interests, pharmaceuticals funding, and continuing medical education. Ongoing Research Project.
Selected Recent Publications
Graham, S.S. (2011). Dis-ease or disease? Ontological rarefaction in the medical-industrial complex. Journal of Medical Humanities. DOI 10.1007/s10912-011-9137-5
Recent scholarship in medical humanities has expressed strong concern over the ability of pharmaceuticals companies to medicalize discomfort and subsequently invent diseases. In this article, I explore the clinical debates over the ontology of the sinus headache as a possible counter-case. Extending Foucault’s concept of principles or rarefaction, this paper documents the efforts of clinicians to resist the pharmaceutically provided understanding of the sinus headache. In so doing, it offers institutions of rarefaction and rarefactive assemblages as useful heuristics for the exploration of disease legitimization discourse.
Graham, S.S. & Herndl, C.G. (2011). Talking off-label: A nonmodern science of pain in the medical-industrial complex. Rhetoric Society Quarterly,42(2), 145-167.
This article uses Foucault’s enunciative analysis and stasis theory to explore the rhetorical work of the Midwest Pain Group (MPG) as its members struggle to collaborate across disciplinary difference to transform the discourse and practice of pain science. Foucault’s enunciative analysis explains how discourse formations regulate statements, but not how formations can be transformed. We argue that stases can be thought of as nodes in the networks of statements Foucault describes and that stasis theory explains the rhetorical means through which members of the MPG work to transform the discourse of pain science. As the members of the MPG confront the epistemological incommensurability that exists between their individual disciplines, they establish a meta-discourse in which the definitional and jurisdictional stases help them invent a new definitional topos. We describe the way this rhetorical work occurs ‘‘off- label’’ in violation of the discursive restrictions of scientific disciplines, regulatory agencies, and insurance institutions.
Graham, S.S. (2009). Agency and the rhetoric of medicine: Biomedical brain scans and the ontology of fibromyalgia. Technical Communication Quarterly, 18(4), 376-404.
Recent agency scholarship has provided compelling accounts of how individuals can strategically occupy authoritative positions, in order to instantiate change. This article explores the discursive mechanisms of this type of agency in the legitimization of disease. Drawing on ethnographic research, this article investigates how a non-human agent (brain scans) contributed to fibromyalgia’s acceptance within the highly regulated discourses of western biomedicine.
Research
Selected Current Projects
Graham, S.S. (Book manuscript). A Nonmodern Pain Science: Agency and Ontologies in the Medical-Industrial Complex.
Graham, S.S., & Teston, C. Persuasive strategies in cancer care and continuing medical education. Ongoing Research Project.
Pepin, J. & Graham, S.S. Conflicts of interests, pharmaceuticals funding, and continuing medical education. Ongoing Research Project.
Selected Recent Publications
Graham, S.S. (2011). Dis-ease or disease? Ontological rarefaction in the medical-industrial complex. Journal of Medical Humanities. DOI 10.1007/s10912-011-9137-5
Recent scholarship in medical humanities has expressed strong concern over the ability of pharmaceuticals companies to medicalize discomfort and subsequently invent diseases. In this article, I explore the clinical debates over the ontology of the sinus headache as a possible counter-case. Extending Foucault’s concept of principles or rarefaction, this paper documents the efforts of clinicians to resist the pharmaceutically provided understanding of the sinus headache. In so doing, it offers institutions of rarefaction and rarefactive assemblages as useful heuristics for the exploration of disease legitimization discourse.
Graham, S.S. & Herndl, C.G. (2011). Talking off-label: A nonmodern science of pain in the medical-industrial complex. Rhetoric Society Quarterly,42(2), 145-167.
This article uses Foucault’s enunciative analysis and stasis theory to explore the rhetorical work of the Midwest Pain Group (MPG) as its members struggle to collaborate across disciplinary difference to transform the discourse and practice of pain science. Foucault’s enunciative analysis explains how discourse formations regulate statements, but not how formations can be transformed. We argue that stases can be thought of as nodes in the networks of statements Foucault describes and that stasis theory explains the rhetorical means through which members of the MPG work to transform the discourse of pain science. As the members of the MPG confront the epistemological incommensurability that exists between their individual disciplines, they establish a meta-discourse in which the definitional and jurisdictional stases help them invent a new definitional topos. We describe the way this rhetorical work occurs ‘‘off- label’’ in violation of the discursive restrictions of scientific disciplines, regulatory agencies, and insurance institutions.
Graham, S.S. (2009). Agency and the rhetoric of medicine: Biomedical brain scans and the ontology of fibromyalgia. Technical Communication Quarterly, 18(4), 376-404.
Recent agency scholarship has provided compelling accounts of how individuals can strategically occupy authoritative positions, in order to instantiate change. This article explores the discursive mechanisms of this type of agency in the legitimization of disease. Drawing on ethnographic research, this article investigates how a non-human agent (brain scans) contributed to fibromyalgia’s acceptance within the highly regulated discourses of western biomedicine.