Postcolonial Fiction And Disability

This book is the first study of disability in postcolonial fiction. Focusing on canonical novels, it explores the metaphorical functions and material presence of disabled child characters. Barker argues that progressive disability politics emerge from postcolonial concerns, and establishes dialogues between postcolonialism and disability studies.

This book centres and explores postcolonial theory, which looks at issues of power, economics, politics, religion and culture and how these elements work in relation to colonial supremacy. It argues that disability is a constitutive material presence in many postcolonial societies and that progressive disability politics arise from postcolonial concerns. By drawing these two subjects together, this handbook challenges oppression, voicelessness, stereotyping, undermining, neo-colonisation and postcolonisation and bridges binary debate between global North and the global South. The book is divided into eight sections i Setting the Scene ii Decolonising Disability Studies iii Postcolonial Theory, Inclusive Development iv Postcolonial Disability Studies and Disability Activism v Postcolonial Disability and Childhood Studies vi Postcolonial Disability Studies and Education vii Postcolonial Disability Studies, Gender, Race and Religion viii Conclusion And comprised of 27 newly written chapters, this book leads with postcolonial perspectives – closely followed by an engagement with critical disability studies – with the explicit aim of foregrounding these contributions; pulling them in from the edges of empirical and theoretical work where they often reside in mainstream academic literature. The book will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies and postcolonial studies as well as those working in sociology, literature and development studies.

Characters with disabilities are often marginalized in fiction, but many occupy central places in literature by celebrated authors like Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie, J. M. Coetzee, Anita Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri, Edwidge Danticat, and others. These authors deploy disability to do important cultural work, writes Christopher Krentz in his innovative study, Elusive Kinship. Such representations not only relate to the millions of disabled people in the global South, but also make more vivid such issues as the effects of colonialism, global capitalism, racism and sexism, war, and environmental disaster. Krentz is the first to put the fields of postcolonial studies, studies of human rights and literature, and literary disability in conversation with each other in a book-length study. He enhances our appreciation of key texts of Anglophone postcolonial literature of the global South, including Things Fall Apart and Midnight's Children. In addition, he uncovers the myriad ways fiction gains energy, vitality, and metaphoric force from characters with extraordinary bodies or minds. Depicting injustices faced by characters with disabilities is vital to raising awareness and achieving human rights. Elusive Kinship nudges us toward a fuller understanding of disability worldwide.

This Companion provides an engaging account of the postcolonial novel, from Joseph Conrad to Jean Rhys. Covering subjects from disability and diaspora to the sublime and the city, this Companion reveals the myriad traditions that have shaped the postcolonial literary landscape.

The mapping, control and subjugation of the human body and mind were core features of the colonial conquest. This book draws together a rich collection of diverse, yet rigorous, papers that aim to expose the presence and significance of disability within colonialism, and how disability remains present in the establishment, maintenance and continuation of colonial structures of power. Disability as a site of historical analysis has become critically important to understanding colonial relations of power and the ways in which gender and identity are defined through colonial categorisations of the body. Thus, there is a growing prominence of disability within the historical literature. Yet, there are few international anthologies that traverse a critical level of depth on the subject domain. This book fills a critical gap in the historical literature and is likely to become a core reader for post graduate studies within disability studies, postcolonial studies and more broadly across the humanities. The chapters in this book were originally published as articles in Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture.

Working across time periods and critical contexts, this volume provides the most comprehensive overview of literary representations of disability.

"This book centres and explores postcolonial theory, which looks at issues of power, economics, politics, religion, and culture and how these elements work in relation to colonial supremacy. It argues that disability is a constitutive material presence in many postcolonial societies and that progressive disability politics arise from postcolonial concerns. By drawing these two subjects together, this handbook challenges oppression, voicelessness, stereotyping, undermining, neo-colonisation, and postcolonisation and bridges binary debate between global North and the global South. The book is divided into 5 sections -Decolonising Disability Studies -Postcolonial Theory, Inclusive Development and Engagements with Disability Studies -Postcolonial Disability Studies, Intersectionalities and Disability Activism -Postcolonial Disability, Childhood and Educational Studies -Postcolonial Discourse, Arts and Literature And comprised of 33 newly written chapters, this book leads with postcolonial perspectives - closely followed by an engagement with critical disability studies - with the explicit aim of foregrounding these contributions; pulling them in from the edges of empirical and theoretical work where they often reside in mainstream academic literature. The book will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies and postcolonial studies as well as those working in sociology, literature and development studies"--

Literature and Disability introduces readers to the field of disability studies and the ways in which a focus on issues of impairment and the representation of disability can provide new approaches to reading and writing about literary texts. Disability plays a central role in much of the most celebrated literature, yet it is only in recent years that literary criticism has begun to consider the aesthetic, ethical and literary challenges that this poses. The author explores: key debates and issues in disability studies today different forms of impairment, with the aim of showing the diversity and ambiguity of the term "disability" the intersection between literary critical approaches to disability and feminist, post-colonial, and autobiographical writing genre and representations of disability in relation to literary forms including novels, short stories, poems, plays and life writing This volume provides students and academics with an accessible overview of literary critical approaches to disability representation.