Actions for Operation freak : narrative, identity, and the spectrum of bodily abilities

Email RIS file
Bookmark
Report an Issue

Operation freak : narrative, identity, and the spectrum of bodily abilities / Christian Flaugh

Author
Flaugh, Christian, 1968-
Published
Montréal : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2012.
Physical Description
1 online resource
Access Online

Availability

I Want It
I Want It

Finding items...

Language Note
English.
Contents
Locations and locutions of ability operations -- Excising conjoined citizenship; or, the beheading of linguistic abilities in Jacques Godbout's Les têtes à Papineau -- Regenerating family fortune; incising religious orders of gender and procreation in Tahar Ben Jelloun's L'enfant de sable and La nuit sacrée -- Witchy ways: transregional mutilations of race and supernatural abilities in Maryse Conté's Moi, Tituba sorcière ...
Summary
In Operation Freak, Christian Flaugh embarks upon an exploration of the intricate connection between the physical bodies and narratives that, subjected to all manner of operations, generate identity. The author spotlights such voluntary and involuntary acts to show how discourses of ability, disability, and bodily manipulation regularly influence the production in and of various Francophone texts. Flaugh's foundation is the critical examination of mutually-informing narratives: Francophone novels that hyperbolically signal normative discourses through quintessential "freaks" (monstres) such as the Siamese twin, the bearded lady, and the exotic witch; and the related sociocultural master narratives from North America, North Africa, and the Caribbean. Employing disability and freak culture theories alongside studies of identification and narrative, Flaugh's close readings move beyond polarized discussions of "disabled" and "non-disabled" bodies. They expand such discussions to articulate how ability - like identity and narrative - is impermanent. It passes and it is passed throughout a spectrum at the same time that it intersects regularly with various narratives of identity like citizenship, gender, and race. Each chapter reveals how "operation" is a profit-driven identification process informed by abilities and constantly reproduced by surgeons, slave masters, writers, and the "freak" protagonists themselves. An unflinching look at such manipulation, Operation Freak illustrates the undeniably visceral relation between bodily ability, identity, narrative, and normality carved onto the body of the freak of culture (monstre de la culture).
Subject(s)
ISBN
9780773587878 (electronic bk.)
077358787X (electronic bk.)
9780773540279
077354027X
1283834820
9781283834827
Digital File Characteristics
data file
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
View MARC record | catkey: 43173044