mod07lec29 - Literary Disability Studies: An Interview with Dr. Shilpa Anand

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27:26 Prof Kara introduces the idea of disability poetics. Dr Anand refers to Ato Quaysons "Aesthetic Nervousness" where he lists a typology of disability representation which is interesting to see as a reference to ideas before the emergence of disability consciousness. He describes the encounters between the disabled character and the non-disabled character in which there is a nervousness in the encounter. In the type folk/fairy tales you may have an instance where the hero being put to the test. The are tested by being introduced to a disabled character to test the moral character of the hero. Are they disgusted or empathetic.

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04:57 She says that her work took her into archival from the 18th Century Colonial material to more recent sources including the Indian Medical Gazette. In the US the emergence of sub-group in the 70's and 80's encouraged the discussion about different type of bodies

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37:25 She introduces the use of disability as a metaphors, blind, deaf , or lame as reinforcement of negative stereotypes. This idea has been contest by people such as Tania D Troksy who introduces Frantz Fanon uses disability metaphors while searching for social justice. She say we can examine the metaphor in its rhetorical context.

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17:20 Discusses the literary tool of plotting with examples from Aristotle to Shakespear. She states that the literary disability studies "lens" gives a new perspective on the classics especially on the development of tragic characters who usually have some "defect" connected with their downfall creating pity and fear in the audience (Macbeth, Richard III). The defect is usually a disability which causes the fall.

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23:23 Prof. Karah brings in the "nothing about us without us" of non-fiction, in biography etc. Dr Anand suggests that the non-fiction writing gives opportunity to reverse the "gaze" which is normally found in fiction where people with disabilities are described by others and do not have their own voice.

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15:20 she mentions Shelley’s -Frankenstein and how she depicts the suffering the character experiences through the stigmatisation he experiences from his non-normative appearance.

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09:10 Prof. Karah mentions that worldwide literary disability studies have developed very quickly and that in the USA and the UK and that they have covered all sorts of subjects. The University of Leeds have done some strong work (Colin Barnes)

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42:37 Prof Karah mentions how he hear Dr Anand talk about "differently-abled" problem how it plays out differently in other south Indian languages.

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25:24 She mentions Reshma Valliappan's "Fallen Standing" is a good instance of the reversal of the "gaze". She uses coining of the title "Schizophrenist", implying a person of expertise in the knowledge of the condition, to claim back the authority from the dominant medical specialists to speak about the condition from the real world experience of living within that spectrum of cognition.

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22:04 Brings in T.S Elliot "heap of broken images" in poetry providing shards of experience that can be pieced together to create a simulation of in the reader of the writers experience.

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13:54 Prof Kara asks about the methodology for writing about disability in literature and they go onto mention character, plot, theme and narrative. Location in the world of the text. Does the character have agency or is spoken for?

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08:14 She uses the term "normatively disability". She briefly introduces this and I think she implies that the development of such language, as a reaction to negative stereotypes created by the use of the word normal and all else is not normal, has in itself created problems as this coinage of new terminology is not well understood so the field of discussions become confused (See www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2015.1120657). She says that the previously common approach in social science towards disability was that it was a problem to be solved and that literature provides a space to introduce different approaches to the subject.

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43:00 He goes on to mention how we can look on with suspicion to the use of disability as metaphor in the narrative processes where grand narratives where in film using the disability to to develop the plot and then erases dump it in the end. She mentions the work of David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder Cultural Locations of Disability (www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo3533856.html)

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20:36 Brings in the "Stream of consciousness narrative" methods in the example of Virginia Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_Dalloway). It allows us to see into a mindset of conflicted person and experience the fragmentation of thought in the everyday. How does mental distress effect their world view.

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08:56 She uses the word Corporeality - definitions = "Corporeal describes something that has a physical form. It is the opposite of spiritual or emotional. Something that is corporeal exists in the real world. It's sort of a fancy way of saying bodily or physical.", "having, consisting of, or relating to a physical material body: such as not spiritual, not intangible", "noun the state or quality of being corporeal; bodily existence" I have a slight objection to this as not all disability is about the body and therefore the invisible disabilities of the mind are not implied by this although the brain is a physical part of the body we don't generally think of the cognitive processes as being as a part of the physical form.

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09:55 She proposed that Literary Disability Studies is a Critique of Medical Humanities

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08:30 She goes onto say that social science approach had seen disability as a problem that needed solving as appose to the idea that dismodernism proposes that the condition called "disabled " is just another part of the spectrum of human existence.

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49:40 She gives an example from Tamil literature from the ..... "Nontinatakam " a person who misbehaves has his arm and leg amputated.

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11:40 Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies

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02:50 Studied under Prof. Lennard Davis at University of Illinois.

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33:30 She mentions the case of the unreliable narrator. Recent discussions have looked at the idea of unreliability and the possibility of this idea being a product of normative ways of looking at the world. Reliable/unreliable.

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41:40 She says that other languages are not getting the same attention regarding the use of politically correct words to modify understanding within society through modifying the ay we use language .

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PRof Karah asks how cripistemology can be applied to Indian languages.