Writing the Body: Reading the Autoimmune Form in Shahd Alshammari’s Head Above Water

Abstract

This article examines Shahd Alshammari’s Head Above Water (2022) through the concept of autoimmune form, arguing that the memoir’s literary structure emerges through the aesthetic mediation of embodied experience, rather than merely representing illness as thematic content. Adopting new formalism’s attention to the relationship between literary form and corporeality as its primary theoretical framework, the article draws on phenomenology to examine bodily contingency and feminist disability studies to read embodied experiences through issues of gender, dependency, and relationality. Fragmented chapters, recursive temporality, diary insertions and polyphonic narration organize Alshammari’s representation of multiple sclerosis. Instead of suggesting that illness mechanically determines literary form, the article demonstrates how Alshammari translates fluctuations and uncertainties of living with chronic illness into formal strategies that unsettle ableist expectations of coherence, progression, productivity, and closure. It further examines how dependency, relationality, and collective storytelling challenge normative constructions of femininity and autonomous subjecthood, while tactile language foregrounds writing as an affective and material site. By proposing autoimmune form as a critical category specific to Alshammari’s writing, the article extends scholarship on disability memoir, corporeal narratology, and chronic illness narratives from representing embodiment towards its aesthetic organization, showing how distinct embodied experiences can engender new formal possibilities.

Keywords

• Autoimmune form
• disability memoir
• chronic illness
• embodiment
• narrative

Bedeni Yazmak: Shahd Alshammari’nin Head Above Water’ında Otoimmün Biçimi Okumak

Abstract

Bu makale, Shahd Alshammari’nin Head Above Water (2022) adlı eserini otoimmün biçim kavramı üzerinden inceleyerek anı anlatısının edebî yapısının, hastalığı yalnızca tematik bir içerik olarak temsil etmekten ziyade, bedensel deneyimin estetik dolayımlanması yoluyla ortaya çıktığını ileri sürmektedir. Temel kuramsal çerçevesini yeni biçimciliğin edebî biçim ile bedensellik arasındaki ilişkiye yönelik yaklaşımı üzerine kuran çalışma, bedenin olumsallığını incelemek için fenomenolojiden, bedensel deneyimleri toplumsal cinsiyet, bağımlılık ve ilişkisellik meseleleri üzerinden okumak için ise feminist engellilik çalışmalarından yararlanmaktadır. Parçalı bölümler, döngüsel zamansallık, günlüklerden yapılan eklemeler ve çok sesli anlatım, Alshammari’nin multipl skleroz deneyimini temsil edişini biçimlendirmektedir. Makale, hastalığın edebî biçimi mekanik olarak belirlediğini öne sürmek yerine, Alshammari’nin kronik hastalıkla yaşamanın beraberinde getirdiği dalgalanmaları ve belirsizlikleri; tutarlılık, ilerleme, üretkenlik ve tamamlanmışlığa ilişkin sağlamcı beklentileri sarsan biçimsel stratejilere nasıl dönüştürdüğünü ortaya koymaktadır. Çalışma ayrıca bağımlılık, ilişkisellik ve kolektif hikâye anlatıcılığının kadınlığa ve özerk öznelliğe ilişkin normatif kurgulara nasıl meydan okuduğunu incelerken dokunsal dilin, yazmayı duygulanımsal ve maddi bir alan olarak nasıl öne çıkardığını ele almaktadır. Otoimmün biçimi Alshammari’nin yazınsal pratiğine özgü eleştirel bir kategori olarak öneren makale, engellilik anı anlatıları, bedensel anlatıbilim ve kronik hastalık anlatıları üzerine yürütülen araştırmaları, bedenselliğin temsilinden onun estetik örgütlenmesine doğru genişleterek farklı bedensel deneyimlerin yeni biçimsel olanaklar yaratabileceğini göstermektedir.

Keywords

• Otoimmün biçim
• engellilik anı anlatısı
• kronik hastalık
• bedensellik
• anlatı

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