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Making Bodies Matter: Disability Narrative After the ADA

Hetrick, Nicholas M.

Abstract Details

2011, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.

The disability rights movement aims to shift the definition of “disability” from something like “a set of pathologies located in individual bodies and causing inability to perform certain tasks or meet certain standards” to something like “a set of contingent interpretive, institutional, and systemic practices that disable people with allegedly anomalous bodies.” In the political history of this movement, the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 was the single most important moment in forcing that shift in the mind of the public at large. Partly as a result of this relatively recent movement toward understanding disability as an identity and as a primarily social rather than a primarily medical or physiological phenomenon, disability is often represented a value-neutral or value-positive part of disabled characters’ and narrators’ understandings of themselves in contemporary narrative texts created by both disabled and nondisabled artists. Disability in such texts functions as a mode of expression, an object of contemplation, or both, demonstrating that disability has taken on a positive valence for artists working in various media and genres. For this project I have selected texts in a range of media (novels, memoir, graphic narrative) that deal with different disabilities (Tourette syndrome, autism, blindness, and chronic illness). At the same time, these texts are unified in being interested in identity formation and in being published by major publishers and thus being widely available for popular consumption.

Making Bodies Matter accomplishes two goals: First, it identifies new objects of study, characterized by a shift in attitudes and practices toward disability that has become prominent since 1990. Second, it develops a new methodology for disability studies—a field often focused on lesser-known contemporary and older art and primarily focused on political readings—increasing its aesthetic dimension by using the principles and methodology of rhetorical narrative theory. I take the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 as a starting point for the project because of the way it reframed disability in the law and, to an extent, in the popular imagination. I show that one defining feature of contemporary literary treatments of disability is that disability is often framed as a positive identity rather than an awful fate or symbolically loaded physical signifier. Disability in contemporary literature, including relatively popular works, is a complex phenomenon, matter-of-factly represented and potentially illuminating for everyone.

Brenda Brueggemann, PhD (Committee Co-Chair)
Frederick Aldama, PhD (Committee Co-Chair)
David Herman, PhD (Committee Member)
James Phelan, PhD (Committee Member)
260 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Hetrick, N. M. (2011). Making Bodies Matter: Disability Narrative After the ADA [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1306377901

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Hetrick, Nicholas. Making Bodies Matter: Disability Narrative After the ADA. 2011. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1306377901.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Hetrick, Nicholas. "Making Bodies Matter: Disability Narrative After the ADA." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1306377901

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)