Foreclosed Futurity and Genres of Care in Barbara Peabody’s The Screaming Room

Medical humanities scholars such as Arthur Frank and Thomas Couser have long argued that subjects being able to tell the story of their lives within a coherent, linear temporal framework is beneficial to both the patient’s wellbeing and their communication with others. These models for understanding patient identity, however, often provide a binary model of identity where a subject either has a coherent, linear life narrative, or is a ‘narrative wreck.’ This article argues against the supposition that a foreseeable and comprehensible life trajectory is necessary for narrative self-articulation by ill subjects. It does this through theorizing a concept of foreclosed futurity to describe when a narrative is written without the sense of a clear and foreseeable future. Through engaging with John Frow’s formalist analysis of genre, and the affect theory of Lauren Berlant and Brian Massumi, this article provides a reading of Barbara Peabody’s The Screaming Room that demonstrates how narrative identity can be maintained within the ‘crisis ordinariness’ of a foreclosed future.