autoimmune schadenfreude

I once asked political theorist Iris Young if she'd produce a theoretical piece reflecting on her experiences going through chemotherapy - after all, she'd written about her embodied experiences of pregnancy, breast-feeding, menstruation, and menopause.  "No!" she responded immediately.  Those were experiences she'd rather have forgotten than memorialized by writing about them.

I've never gone through chemotherapy, and I hope I never will.  Nonetheless, when I was preliminarily diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder last summer, I decided that if it was going to interrupt my career as a political theorist, I had better make it work for me by using it as an opportunity to theorize.  Ironically, a brief essay I wrote about Jacques Derrida and the concept of "autoimmunity" in his writing on democracy appeared in print about the time that I was becoming ill - so I already had a starting point.  I write today's entry in the spirit of making my bodily condition a place from which to think critically about our contemporary political condition.

Last night, I went to National Jewish Medical Center for another CT scan of my chest.  This has become a routine for me.  Every three months, I lie down on an uncomfortable table, arms above my head, while an anonymous male voice commands me to "breathe ... hold your breath ... breathe normally."

I am in the very perverse position of hoping that this CT scan will reveal that the disease my doctors think I have has become active again in my lungs.  It's a kind of "autoimmune schadenfreude" - I am wishing myself to be sick.  Or, to be more precise, since I have plenty of daily evidence that I am not well, I am wishing for the CT scan to show my doctors evidence that I am sick.

I know this is bizarre, but it is because of the particular disease they suspect I have:  sarcoidosis.  The only 100% fool-proof way to diagnose this disease is with a biopsy of tissue that reveals that my body is forming granulomas of a kind specific to sarcoidosis.  Based on my symptoms, they are 99% sure of the diagnosis, and they have been since late July 2007.  However, without a biopsy, they can't prove that it is sarcoidosis.  And they need the proof to feel comfortable proceeding with the treatment, which is toxic and can produce some unpleasant side effects (e.g. cancers, organ failure, osteoporosis, eye damage - you know the drill).

I've had two biopsies, both of which were negative.  Now any normal person would celebrate a negative biopsy.  In my case, however, a negative biopsy is unhelpful.  It delays the treatment that we all know I need.  And, because an optimistic doctor jumped the gun and put me on steroids before knowing the results of a biopsy, the disease was suppressed in my lungs during the fall.  They took me off the steroids when the results came in, and now we are just waiting for the disease to resurface somewhere in my body where we can do a biopsy.  (Sadly, arthritis, fatigue, difficulty thinking, and general malaise are not really biopsy-able.)

It's been strange these past months to feel at odds with my body - to be wishing it unwell.  It reminds me of the feelings I had in elementary school, when someone would show up to school with a broken limb.  She'd become the most popular kid in school that day - everyone would want to sign her cast!  It made me wish that I had a broken arm or leg.  Of course, when I finally managed to break an ankle in college, it hurt like hell and made it dangerous to navigate my campus's icy sidewalks, and, frankly, by then signing casts was no longer cool.

This perverse desire to be sick - and to prove that I am sick - reminds me of the uneasy feelings I had back in early 2003.  I wanted our invasion of Iraq to go badly, to prove that Bush had been wrong to instigate it - even as I knew I didn't want anyone - U.S., Iraqi, or "coalition" - to die or become injured for a pointless war.  I was thrilled when the predicted evidence of weapons of mass destruction failed to surface in the months following - even though I was saddened that this meant that many people died - and continue to die - in vain.

This delight in the failures of our political opponents is another form of "autoimmune schadenfreude" - autoimmune because their failures are not just their failures, but ours.  The failure of Bush's war - no matter how much I should wish to disassociate myself from it - is a failure that affects all Americans (and, of course, the Iraqis, and to a different extent the entire world).  We pay the taxes to fund the war, we pay with lives and bodies to wage and report on the war, and even though many on the left claim the war is "not in our name," and many on both sides of the fence demand immediate withdrawal, we are ultimately responsible to clean up the mess that our government has made - of Iraq, of our international reputation, of the many lives that have been disrupted.

This delight in failure is autoimmune, then, because it is a delight in a failure that ultimately harms us.  Like my hope that my body will prove to be diseased, many of us on the left hoped that the war would go badly, even though we knew this would be bad for all of us.*

I think this autoimmune schadenfreude is a characteristic emotion of democratic politics.  People lose all the time in democracies:  whether it is Republicans or Democrats, the Tories or Labour, and especially those who subscribe to minority views that rarely win elected office - in this country, socialists, libertarians, greens, and the like.  People who feel strongly about their political views don't like losing.  Plus, politicians tell us all the time that if the other side wins, it'll mean the end of the world as we know it.  After all, we can't take another four years of Bush.  And if the Democrats take over the White House, that means the terrorists will have won.

So, when our side loses, we wait for the winners to screw up.  We don't want them to screw up on one level, of course - because their failure is bad news for the country they are ostensibly running.  But on another level, we want them to screw up - because that is our vindication - proof that we were right all along to vote for our side and not theirs.  After all, if the other side were to do a good job of running the country, that would mean that we were in the wrong!

It's a perversity of democratic politics - that because it creates losers, it feeds the desire to see itself fail, to prove that it produces leaders, policies, and outcomes that are evidence of its own disease.

Here's hoping my lungs are scarred by sarcoidal granulomas!

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*There was an article a while back in Slate, I think, that described this feeling on the left in terms of a kind of schadenfreude.  I haven't found it yet - but I'll link to it when I do.

Comments

[Chris]

Um, here's hoping!?! :/ As I started to read your post, I was reminded of Lynne Sharon Schwartz's novel The Fatigue Artist - highly recommended.

[Denise]

There are so many people I know that have had various autoimmune disorders that are so hard to pin down.. celiac being a big one.. (you sure they are looking in the right place?) and it is very frustrating! Your parallel with political frustrations is quite right.

[margene]

Your political commentary is dead on. How sad failure is needed as proof we were right. I do hope your body cooperates and the medical profession can stop 'practicing' and get down to business!

[olga]

I think it comes down to we want to say "I TOLD YOU SO!!!" and we want to advert disaster instead of being left to pick up the pieces.

[Heather Joins The Round]

Good analogy. I'm reminded of a time in my own family when a relative's divorce was met with barely suppressed glee and satisfaction when really, it's tragic when a marriage ends.

I suppose it would be helpful if we could all turn our minds to solutions instead of feeding our glee, but what a f&^@($% mess, it's so hard to see a way out!

[Anne B.]

So frustrating when you need to be sicker to know that you are sick. I've been through many negative tests, with doctors looking at you thinking you are just making it up, but you aren't you really are sick! I am hoping you get well however, so I wish you well. And I wish troops well, but the war bad. So that it ends, and everyone gets along. My little world is not very realistic I know.
Anne in Calgary

[JayJay]

I hope your tests are positive so you and your doctors can work towards effective treatment! As a sufferer of autoimmune disorders myself (mine are much less traumatic, asthma & Grave's disease), I often felt like I had been betrayed by my own body.

Your political analysis seems so spot-on! I hope you are able to write something academic about the topic. You describe it so well!

[Jill]

Ugh, Michaele I'm sorry. I am still hoping you can avoid that lung biopsy, so if that means rooting for a negative catscan, I'll join you.

[Anne]

There is power in being the loser & the underdog. (Not "undergod," as I just wrote, though that would be a cool job.)

But there's a difference between the schadenfreude of exposing something we knew was wrong so that we can crow (or get treated or get a new president) and actually wishing for bad results. (This is probably where you say, "Well, duh...") Maybe that's just a matter of perspective...

[Wanda]

Well, I do understand that wishing that you feel sick, or that your body displays some signal of that sickness so that you can be properly treated makes sense, but yet it doesn't. Eh, such is life. good luck with a positive biopsy.

[Alarming Female]

"Autoimmune Schadenfreude" is not a combination I ever expected to read.

I felt the same way when we first went into Iraq--validated when it went so wrong so fast, yet feeling guilty for feeling validated. You pegged it there.

I hope you're "sick enough" to get an accurate biopsy but not sick enough to feel worse. Could you manage that, please?

kai thx bai

[Daphne]

ditto to A.F.

The main difference between liberals and conservatives is whether or not we feel guilt at schadenfreude. Liberals feel guilty; conservatives take it as a complete and unassailable evidence that they are right.

Though I am generalizing--I have met some conservatives who are open to thinking about other points of view, and certainly some liberals who are so far to the left it becomes indistinguishable from the right.