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Literary and filmic depictions of the disabled reinforce an "ableist" ideology that classifies bodies as normal or abnormal--positive or negative. Disabled characters are often represented as aberrant or evil and are isolated or incarcerated. This book examines language in film, fiction and other media that perpetuates the representation of the disabled as abnormal or problematic. The author looks at depictions of disability--both disparaging and amusing--and discusses disability theory as a framework for reconsidering "normal" and "abnormal" bodies.
List of contents
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: The [adj.] Body
1.¿Razzle Dazzle Heartbreak: Disability Promotion and Glorious Abjection in Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music in the World
2.¿Transposing Disability: Passing, Intellectual Disabilities, and Accommodating Others
3.¿Icarus, Gods and the "Lesson" of Disability
4.¿Freaks, Misfits and Other Citizens
5.¿20th-Century Fables: Fiction, Disease, and-oh, yeah-Disability
6.¿The Body in Pieces: Lacan and the Crisis of the Unified Fragmentary
7.¿The Narrator Witness: Dis/connections Between Disability and Death
8.¿Where the Line Breaks: Disability in the Poetry of Roy Miki and Sharon Thesen
9.¿Play the Facts and the Truth: Disability in Documentary Film
10.¿Sitting Pretty: The Politics of (Not) Standing on Ceremony
Afterword: Not Assisted Suicide, Yet!
Chapter Notes
Works Cited
Index
About the author
Nicole Markotic teaches Creative Writing, Children's Literature, and Disability Studies at the University of Windsor (Ontario). She has worked as a freelance editor, was poetry editor for Red Deer Press for six years, edits the chapbook series Wrinkle Press, and is currently on the NeWest editorial board.
