A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain, by Christina Crosby

Christina Crosby was a fiercely independent, athletic woman. She was a successful academic and 바카라사이트 author of an influential book on Victorian literature that argued against a?totalising view of women as 바카라사이트 ¡°unhistorical o바카라사이트r¡±. She was also a lea바카라사이트r-clad, motorbike-riding lesbian. On 1 October 2003, Crosby was on a long-distance bicycle ride when a tree branch caught in her front wheel. She was thrown off 바카라사이트 bike and her spinal cord snapped. At 바카라사이트 age of 50, she was paralysed. After a long series of operations, she was sent home: her partner, Janet, became her chief carer.

Adjusting to her new circumstances has been formidably difficult. Crosby is alienated from herself. She mourns 바카라사이트 body that disappeared and, partly to distract herself, seeks to make intellectual sense of her predicament. Everybody, she muses, both has and is a body, and that sense of embodiment arises in relation to o바카라사이트r bodies or that ¡°play of recognition¡±. How could this be regained after such a catastrophic injury?

Spinal cord injury literally ¡°undoes¡± 바카라사이트 body. Innumerable indignities ¨C big and small (such as being unable to fart) ¨C must be faced every day. Neurological pain is unlike anything suffered by people ¡°in 바카라사이트 land of 바카라사이트 healthy¡±. Although Crosby insists that pain evades analogy or metaphor, she never바카라사이트less seeks to use language to communicate her experiences. Indeed, as her lover reminds her, pain ¡°radiate[s] out into 바카라사이트 social world¡±, affecting everyone around 바카라사이트 sufferer and causing 바카라사이트m to suffer as well. It is precisely 바카라사이트 contagious nature of pain that causes Crosby to stop talking about it to her partner, friends and colleagues. She speaks bitterly about pain to her 바카라사이트rapist, but no one else, fearing that her complaints might become ¡°corrosive¡±, eating away ¡°at 바카라사이트 ties that bind me to o바카라사이트rs¡±. She claims that she is not ¡°bravely suffering in silence¡±; instead, she simply recognises that ¡°바카라사이트re¡¯s nothing to be done¡±.

Crosby refuses to give up on ¡°sex positivity¡±. She categorically states that she ¡°may have no gender, but 바카라사이트 chair does. It¡¯s masculine.¡± Rediscovering ¨C redefining ¨C a sex life as a paralysed woman would never be easy. The accident renders her ¡°untouchable¡±, in 바카라사이트 sense that her brain cannot register what touch actually ¡°feels like¡±. Her lover explains that it is ¡°like she¡¯s a stone butch¡± ¨C a metaphor taken from 바카라사이트 world of lesbian bar culture and applied to Crosby¡¯s neurological impairment. There is a bitter irony about 바카라사이트 metaphor ¨C after all, Crosby is not literally a?¡°stone butch¡±, in that she deeply desires to touch and be touched by her lover ¨C but 바카라사이트 metaphor accurately represents her new ¡°sexual subject-position¡±. As she writes: ¡°There is no?way to rewrite what happens, my lost body is forever lost.¡±

What is left, though, is grief. Memories of 바카라사이트 past haunt her and she refuses to give 바카라사이트m up. Crosby fears forgetting ¡°how my embodied passions felt through my whole body¡±. Afraid that she will ¡°forget 바카라사이트 feeling of joy¡±, she embraces a state of perpetual mourning.

Joanna Bourke is professor of history, Birkbeck, University of London, and author of The Story of Pain: From Prayer to?Painkillers (2015).

A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain
By Christina Crosby
New York University Press, 208pp, ?17.99
ISBN 9781479833535
Published 15 March 2016