At Play In Her Clearing: Centering The Personal Experience Of Disability Within Irigarayan Philsophy

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2009-09-16T18:18:56Z

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English

Abstract

From a theoretical perspective, the disabled woman can be seen as doubly othered' within patriarchal culture. Because the disabled woman faces this dual otherness, she is barred from both masculine language and able-bodied culture. By looking at the memoirs of three women who became disabled in adulthood: Nancy Mairs', Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled, Simi Linton's My Body Politic, and finally Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick's critical article "Bodies Together: Touch, Ethics and Disability," I will ask the question: How can the disabled woman gain a new sense of embodiment and move beyond the able/disabled binary? To answer this question I will engage in a close reading of all three of the memoirs, providing examples that showcase the woman's new becoming which can be understood in light of Luce Irigaray's theories of writing the body' and ethics. To this end, in writing their memoirs, these women successfully come into language through their bodies; thus, achieving their goal of constructing a fully realized notion of embodiment for the disabled woman.

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