From Trope to Pathos in Health Scholarship: Sharing Disgust in the Kermit Gosnell Case

摘要

Over the past four decades, a field loosely called “Rhetoric of Health” emerged. Inrnthis space, we illustrate how attending to bodies and their emotions is pivotal tornunderstanding rhetorics related to “health” in ways that better enable collectivernand individual flourishing. Moreover, we suggest that this attention to embodiedrnemotion and collective affiliation bridges social scientific and rhetorical modes ofrnhealth communication inquiry. Oddly perhaps, this story focuses on disgust. Werndescribe some of the uses and missed uses of disgust in the case of Kermit Gosnell,rnan abortion provider whose practices were constructed as a modern day “back alley.”