Paralysed bodies and limited locomotor systems - a diachronic perspective on im/mobility in French literature (XVII-XXI c.)
Final Report Abstract
Within the framework of Cultural Disability Studies, the project developed a perspective on the history of knowledge and the cultural history of ‘paralysis’ (French ‘paralysie’) based on how it is represented in French literature. Analogue and computer-aided methods are used to evaluate the collection ‘Les Classiques de la littérature’ of the French National Library (BnF), which contains literary texts as well as a series of miscellanea. The study analyses the concrete and figurative dimension of the concept of ‘paralysis’ and reveals how ideas of paralysis are embedded in their historical contexts of knowledge, how they emerge from a specific situation, solidify and circulate. On the one hand, the study encourages readers to scrutinise these ideas as constructions. On the other hand, it offers a tool to rethink current and future conceptions of paralysis, illness and disability on the basis of the knowledge contexts that actually surround them. The visible ‘main symptom’, immobility, is decisive for the concept, because the concrete, pathological meaning feeds the context-variable figurative dimension. Over the centuries, this has developed powerful metaphors that are important for understanding how concrete realities of illness and disability are inscribed in social and cultural structures (of thinking). The mutual influence of physical reality and metaphorisation, as practices of coproduction of knowledge, has fostered the consolidation and persistence of stereotypical ideas about paralysis that differ greatly from actual specific historical realities. Fictions contribute to varying degrees to the consolidation of such ideas, but the corpus analysed also provides information about examples that attempt to pluralise the discourse at all times. The analysis of paralysed characters as fictional embodiments of immobility shows that (especially for the 19th century) there is a correlation to the presence of experiences of paralysis in non-literary reality. Despite the criticism of reductionism, the observed use of metaphors is essential, too, as the moral issues discussed (e.g. in the area of social responsibility) or the critical statements on socio-cultural and political topics reveal social patterns. Particularly noteworthy are those texts that go beyond the status of metaphor and deal with the actual conditions of physical and social immobility. These appear as anticipations of the direct thematization of paralysis as a disability that emerged in the 20th century. With an increasing shift away from a fatalistic discourse of illness towards a discourse of disability, the poetological significance changes: paralysis evolves from a motif to a theme that is more frequently politicised in relation with other social discourses.
Publications
-
"Behinderung, Heteronormativität und Geschlecht. Eine Analyse von Lähmungsdarstellungen in sechs französischsprachigen Comics”, Vortrag auf der Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Comicforschung, Göttingen, 11.-13. Dezember.
Daniela Kuschel
-
Diskurs- und Motivgeschichte mit Methoden der Digital Humanities? Ein Versuch die Präsenz und Funktion von Lähmung und Im/mobilität in der französischen Literatur (1750-1914) zu erforschen. Vortrag im Rahmen des interdisziplinären literaturwissenschaftlichen Kolloquiums, Universität Marburg, 15. Juni
Daniela Kuschel
-
„Potentialisierte Wirklichkeitsräume und die Dekonstruktion von stereotypen Behinderungsbildern”, Vortrag auf dem XXXVIII. Romanistentag in Leipzig, 24.-27. September
Daniela Kuschel
-
„Romanfiguren mit Locked-In-Syndrom“, Blogbeitrag in: Images of Disability. The blog of the research project „Narrative, Expectation, Experience“, 18. Dezember.
Daniela Kuschel
