Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature
Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature
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非凡的身体：描绘美国文化和文学中的身体残疾
DOI：
10.2307/468051
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发表时间：
1996
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
R. G. Thomson
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
G. Couser;R. G. Thomson
非凡的身体：美国文化和文学中的身体残疾。罗斯玛丽加兰汤姆森。纽约：哥伦比亚大学，1996年。x + 200。45块布14块5非凡的机构解决了一个具有重要意义和话题性的主题，具有独创性和复杂性;它是，或者应该成为，在残疾研究的新兴领域的开创性工作，它值得考虑的性别，种族和民族的学生。它的中心主张--“身体非凡的人物[被视为“怪物”、“畸形”、“残疾”或“残废”].对于美国自我塑造的文化项目来说，这是至关重要的，就像支持特权规范的各种性别、种族、民族和性别的异类人物一样”--这是大胆的，也许是有争议的。然而，在短短138页的文字，汤姆森令人信服地支持这一论点，巧妙地理论化和解构残疾作为一个代表性的系统类似于种族和性别：“残疾......是对身体异常的归因--与其说是身体的属性，不如说是关于身体应该是什么或做什么的文化规则的产物。而不是忽视或最小化性别，种族和民族作为主体性的组成部分，汤姆森证明了它们是一个更大的文化体系的一部分，该体系根据相当武断的区别将身体分为等级（并分配权力和特权）-其中“残疾”是一个关键但迄今为止被忽视的因素。在这里，关键的一步，然后，在后结构主义残疾研究一般，是从残疾的病理学，身体缺陷的范式，到残疾作为边缘化和排斥的少数经验的模型，或者换句话说，从个人或医疗到社会或政治模型的转变。汤姆森的分析的一个重要特征是在其主要章节“残疾理论化”中对女权主义理论的修正主义部署。这里的出发点是西方文化中“女性”和“残疾人”身体建构的平行。但汤姆森并不只是把女权主义的见解从性别转移到残疾;她表明，女权主义，这往往是特权的“正常”，有很多东西要学习（和）残疾和理论家都必须警惕的极端本质主义和建构主义。汤姆森在这一章中取得的巨大成就是丰富和复杂了我们对文化在不同主体之间进行歧视的微妙方式的理解;为此，她补充了她的女权主义分析与讨论欧文戈夫曼的耻辱理论（在《耻辱》中），玛丽道格拉斯的“污垢”（在《纯洁与危险》中），以及米歇尔·福柯的“温顺的身体”（在《纪律与惩罚》中），展示了每一个人如何从不同的角度阐明残疾。这一部分有助于阐明生理差异导致污名化的心理根源和文化目的。本书的其余部分包括对来自一系列媒体和时期的文化文本中的残疾的细致入微和深入的研究：19世纪的怪胎秀;斯托、戴维斯和菲尔普斯的感伤小说;以及20世纪非裔美国女作家的小说。而不是局限于自己记录的偏见代表畸形和残疾在十九和二十世纪美国文化，这将是所有太容易，汤姆森审查复杂的相互作用，种族，性别和残疾在不同的历史背景。汤姆森对怪胎秀的讨论表明了怪胎的构建是如何影响相关的排他性规范的;怪胎性通常被映射到种族或文化上的他者的特征上。在早期学者的工作的基础上，她提供了一个原始的阅读这一文化现象的关系，无论是主要的历史趋势的时期和规范的文学人物，如梅尔维尔。…
Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. Rosemarie Garland Thomson. New York: Columbia UP, 1996. x + 200. $45.00 cloth, $14.50 paper. Extraordinary Bodies addresses a subject of great significance and topicality with originality and sophistication; it is, or should become, a seminal work in the emerging field of disability studies, and it merits consideration by students of gender, race, and ethnicity as well. Its central claim--that "the physically extraordinary figure [seen as "monstrous," "deformed," "disabled," or "crippled"] ... is as essential to the cultural project of American self-making as the varied throng of gendered, racial, ethnic, and sexual figures of otherness that support the privileged norm"--is bold and perhaps controversial. Yet in a mere 138 pages of text, Thomson compellingly supports this thesis, deftly theorizing and deconstructing disability as a representative system akin to race and gender: "Disability ... is the attribution of corporeal deviance--not so much a property of bodies as a product of cultural rules about what bodies should be or do." Rather than ignoring or minimizing gender, race, and ethnicity as constituents of subjectivity, Thomson demonstrates that they are part of a larger cultural system which sorts bodies into hierarchies (and distributes power and privilege) according to rather arbitrary distinctions--among which "disability" is a crucial but hitherto neglected factor. The crucial move, here, then, as in poststructuralist disability studies generally, is the shift from a paradigm of disability as pathology, a defect the body, to a model of disability as a minority experience of marginalization and exclusion, or to put it differently, from an individual or medical to a social or political model. A critical feature of Thomson's analysis is its revisionist deployment of feminist theory in its major chapter, "Theorizing Disability." The starting point here is the parallel between the construction of the "female" and the "disabled" body in Western culture. But Thomson does not merely transfer feminist insights from gender to disability; she shows that feminism, which has often privileged the "normate," has much to learn about (and from) disability and that theorists of both have to be wary of the extremes of essentialism and constructionism. Thomson's considerable achievement in this chapter is to enrich and complicate our understanding of the subtle ways in which culture discriminates among various bodies; to this end, she supplements her feminist analysis with discussions of Erving Goffman's theory of stigma (in Stigma), Mary Douglas's of "dirt" (in Purity and Danger), and Michel Foucault's of "docile bodies" (in Discipline and Punish), showing how each illuminates disability from a different perspective. This section helps to elucidate the psychological sources of, and cultural ends served by, the assignment of stigma to physical difference. The rest of the book consists of nuanced and penetrating studies of disability in cultural texts from a range of media and periods: nineteenth century freak shows; sentimental fiction by Stowe, Davis, and Phelps; and twentieth century fiction by African American women writers. Rather than confining herself to documenting the prejudicial representation of deformity and disability in nineteenth and twentieth century American culture, which would be all too easy, Thomson examines the complex interplay of race, gender, and disability in different historical contexts. Thomson's discussion of freak shows demonstrates how the construction of the freak played upon related exclusive norms; freakishness was often mapped onto the characteristics of the racially or culturally Other. Building on the work of earlier scholars here, she offers an original reading of this cultural phenomenon in relation both to major historical trends of the period and to canonical literary figures, like Melville. …