Conventional literary representations of disability reflect and re-inscribe the
fraudulent assumption that individuals with impairments are mysterious 'others,' subhuman
betrayers of the divinely-sanctioned corporeal norm. When such normative 'myths' are
internalized by a social body, the culturally-determined 'disabled' minority is subjected to
various forms of oppression and degradation, stigmatizing efforts designed to strip the
'deviants' of agency and dignity. The object ofthis study is to isolate and, subsequently,
demythologize the presuppositions ordering such conventional disability myths. This
'demythologizing' effort is patterned, in large part, on the theoretical tenets espoused by
Roland Barthes in his influential text Mythologies. Barthes's text, in its emphasis on
destabilizing culturally-fixed 'truths,' provides the theoretical framework necessary for
gauging the socio-political load of disability myth. In an effort to illumine, moreover, the
presence and workings of disability myth in nineteenth and twentieth century Western
consciousness, I examine the specific portraits of disability that appear in Herman
Melville'sMoby-Dick; Melville's canonized text lends itself particularly well to this type of
investigation as its characters -Ahab and Pip, in particular - are representative of the
spectrum of negative disability imagery. This critical exercise, in its emphasis on displacing
and, thus, de-naturalizing mythic representations of 'normal' and 'abnormal' corporeality,
resembles and reinforces the efforts of the Disability Movement and its attempts to restore
power and dignity to the unjustly disenfranchised 'disabled' minority. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/15940 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Tombari, Stephanie L. |
| Contributors | O'Connor, Mary, English |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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