Engelli Bireylere Yönelik Ayrımcılıkla Mücadele: John Belluso’nun Pyretown Oyununda Sağlık Sistemi ve Bakım Verme

Year 2023, Volume: 17 Issue: 2, 260 - 273, 29.12.2023

Duygu Beste Başer Özcan

https://doi.org/10.47777/cankujhss.1409130

Abstract

John Belluso’nun Pyretown adlı oyunu bir annenin Amerikan sağlık sistemi ile olan mücadelesini ve neoliberal yapılanmada engelli bireylere karşı olan ayrımcılığın yıkıcı sonuçlarını ele alır. Neoliberalizm çok çalışma ve tüketim yoluyla mutluluk, sağlık ve başarı vadetse de, oyundaki karakterler özerklik, kar odaklılık, ve özelleştirme gibi fazlaca önemsenen değerlerin kurbanı olurlar. Böyle bir sistemde, engellilik de bireysel bir deneyim olarak görülse de, oyunda günlük hayattaki iç içe geçmiş ve karmaşık dinamiklerin bir parçası olarak betimlenir. Lou engelliliğin çok yönlü bir deneyim olduğunu öğrenirken bir yandan da hayatları tıbbi-endüstriyel kompleks yüzünden dağılan Harry ve Rebecca ile onu değiştiren bir ilişki kurar. Bu bağlamda, oyun engellilik deneyimini gerçekçi bir şekilde yansıtır. Ayrıca, Amerika’daki iş piyasasını, sağlık ve sosyal yardım sistemini bir sorun olarak ele alırken, sosyal, kültürel ve siyasi söylemlerde yeniliği destekler. Bu makalede de tartışılacağı gibi, Belluso’nun Pyretown oyunu bir yandan bakım verme, annelik ve engelliliğin karmaşıklığını ortaya koyarken diğer yandan da neoliberal sistemindeki engelli ayrımcılığını açığa çıkarır.

Keywords

Amerikan Tiyatrosu, Engellilik, John Belluso, Pyretown, Amerikan Sağlık Sistemi

Challenging Ableism: Caregiving and Healthcare in John Belluso’s Pyretown

Abstract

John Belluso’s play Pyretown depicts a single mother’s struggle with the American healthcare system and portrays the destructive consequences of ableism existing in the neoliberal structures. Even though neoliberal ideology promises happiness, health and success through hard work and consumption, the characters in the play are victimized by highly valued autonomy, profit, and privatization. In such a system, disability is also thought to be an individual experience, yet the play shows that it is only a part of complex dynamics in daily life. On her journey to learn disability as a multifaceted experience, Lou engages in affective relationships with Harry and Rebecca whose lives are also jeopardized by the medical industrial complex. The realist portrayal of disability problematizes the job market, the healthcare and welfare system in the United States while promoting for a reform in the social, cultural, and political discourses. Within this context, this article argues that Belluso’s Pyretown exposes and critiques neoliberal ableism as it exists in American society while portraying the complexities of caregiving, motherhood, and disability.

Keywords

American Drama, Disability, John Belluso, Pyretown, American healthcare

References

• Ahmed, S. (2004). Affective economies. Social Text, 22(2), 117-139, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/55780.
• Belluso, J. (2004). Pyretown. American theatre, 39-59.
• Belluso J. (2006) Author’s statement. In V. A. Lewis (Ed.), Beyond victims and villains: Contemporary plays by disabled playwrights (pp. 161-230).
• Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel optimism. Duke UP.
• Butler, J. (2009). Performativity, precarity, and sexual politics. AIBR: Revista de Antrolologia Iberoamericana, 4(3), i-xiii.
• Chemers, M. M. (2015). Defixio: Disability and the speakable legacy of John Belluso. In M. Luckhurst & E. Morin (Eds), Theatre and human rights after 1945: Things unspeakable (pp.209-227).
• Garland Thomson, R. (2009). Staring: how we look. Oxford UP.
• Greenwald Smith, R. (2015). Affect and American literature in the age of neoliberalism. Cambridge UP.
• Hochschild, A. R. (2012). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press.
• Kuppers, P. (2007) The wheelchair’s rhetoric: The performance of disability. TDR, 52(4), 80-88, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25145469.
• Lewis, V. A. (2004). Radical optimism: An interview with the playwright. American Theatre, 21(4), 40.
• Lewis, V. A. (2006). In memoriam, John Belluso, 1969-2006. Disability Studies Quarterly, 26(2), 38, https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/711/888.
• Pedwell, C. (2012). Affective (self-)transformations: Empathy, neoliberalism and international development. Feminist Theory, 13(2), 163-179, https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700112442.
• Puar, J. (2012). Precarity talk: A virtual roundtable with Lauren Berlant, Judith Butler, Bojana Cvejić, Isabell Lorey, Jasbir Puar, and Ana Vujanović. TDR: The Drama Review, 56(4), 163-177, muse.jhu.edu/article/491900.
• Sandahl, C. (2010). Why disability identity matters: From dramaturgy to casting in John Belluso’s Pyretown. In B. Handerson & N. Ostrander (Eds), Understanding disability studies and performance studies (pp.225-241).
• Stevans, A. (2005). Seeking health care but finding each other (Review of Pyretown, directed by Carl Forsman). The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/03/ theater/reviews/seeking-health-care-but-finding-each-other.html.