“Backhanded Compliments; Or, Rehabilitating Rehabilitation in Whitman”

This essay analyzes Walt Whitman’s evolving notion of vigor, especially after the strokes that he experienced in 1873 and 1875. In Specimen Days, Whitman describes “left-hand writing” by Civil War veterans and declares it “beautiful,” though “slant[ing] backwards instead of forward.” In this moment, we see Whitman “looking over some of this writing”—exploring, that is, the fruits of rehabilitation. The concept of “rehabilitation” traditionally assumes an embodied norm even as it tries to find a solution to catastrophic injury. However, it also locates disability strictly in the person as opposed to the environment. Physiological distinctiveness only becomes disabling when the environment refuses to accommodate it—or, in Whitman’s terms, to sing and celebrate it. Yet a more progressive, one might even say a more neurocosmopolitan, understanding of rehabilitation has begun to emerge: one that almost begs to be applied to the good gray poet and bard of democracy.