Diaphanous Bodies: Ability, Disability, and Modernist Irish Literature by Jeremy Colangelo (review)

IF 0.1 4区 文学 0 LITERATURE, BRITISH ISLES
Margot Gayle Backus
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Colangelo's writing is lucid and often elegant. His argument is well organized, clear, and persuasive, and his posture toward others working in the fields in which he engages is notably generous, not only toward the scholars with whom his work is in dialogue but also toward readers who may not have an extensive background in disability studies. As a result, his highly readable introduction not only clearly delineates his own project, but also offers a useful primer on relevant debates in disability studies, and on ongoing post-Enlightenment philosophical debates about the implications of Cartesian subjectivity for our understanding of the self in relation to the body, the senses, and perception.</p> <p>Colangelo's overall project hones in not primarily on disability but, rather, on its presumed but never-defined counterpart, <em>ability</em>, or on what Colangelo terms the \"diaphanous abled body\" (1). Colangelo initiates his extended exploration of the incoherence of able-bodiedness as a category in the first paragraph of his acknowledgments by invoking his own experience as a humanities scholar writing a book during the COVID pandemic. He sets forth a beautifully crafted paradox, observing that writing this book during the pandemic made <strong>[End Page 155]</strong> apparent not only \"how much the work of writing a book is the labor of many, regardless of what the byline might tell you,\" but also \"how much [he] miss[es] this codependency when it is so suddenly taken away\" (vii). This simple description of the author's own situation during the pandemic introduces the central contradiction with which this study contends: everyone is dependent on others, and yet this dependency is, for most of us, for much of our lives, routinely and compulsorily denied, with results that are themselves distorting and disabling.</p> <p>As Colangelo readily demonstrates, to be ostensibly not disabled is in no way the same as having complete adequacy and self-sufficiency in every respect. Indeed, to be not disabled is rather like possessing the Lacanian phallus, a condition simultaneously categorical and imaginary. To be in <em>soi-disant</em> possession of a non-disabled body or, in Colangelo's terms, of the \"mythic diaphanous abled body,\" is not, of course, to be superbly able in every respect (whatever that might mean) but, rather, to have a \"means to side-ste[p] the omnipresence of weakness and limitation\" (4). Thus, self-deception and misrecognition are at the heart of the fundamentally illusory distinction on which the category, disabled, is predicated.</p> <p>The study's theoretical focus—the illusory nature of the abled/disabled opposition—is well suited to its literary critical engagements with a series of Irish modernist writers (James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, George Egerton, and Elizabeth Bowen). Through a series of adroit critical readings, Colangelo's work amounts to a substantial contribution to \"a disability poetics–that is, a theory of how disability relates to and constructs patterns of meaning within works of literature\" (22). Championing \"literary disability studies [as] a collection of tools and models for reading the construction of abled and disabled bodies generally,\" Colangelo's focus \"on ability rather than disability puts the more abstract processes of social construction at the forefront\" (22). This approach results, at times, in a kind of \"disability formalism\" that positions ability as arising \"from a convergence of the enlightenment call to disembodied reason with the role of the novel in constructing the bourgeois subject\" (22).</p> <p>The Cartesian epistemology Colangelo critiques construes the disabled as an easily identified Other, an illusion that is reinforced through the ways we habitually frame our perceptions of our own and others' bodies. 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引用次数: 0

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:

  • Diaphanous Bodies: Ability, Disability, and Modernist Irish Literature by Jeremy Colangelo
  • Margot Gayle Backus (bio)
DIAPHANOUS BODIES: ABILITY, DISABILITY, AND MODERNIST IRISH LITERATURE, by Jeremy Colangelo. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021. xiii + 216 pp. $70 cloth, $54.95 ebook.

Jeremy Colangelo's highly original study, Diaphanous Bodies: Ability, Disability, and Modernist Irish Literature, represents an outstanding contribution to the burgeoning scholarship of disability studies and to both Irish and modernism studies. Colangelo's writing is lucid and often elegant. His argument is well organized, clear, and persuasive, and his posture toward others working in the fields in which he engages is notably generous, not only toward the scholars with whom his work is in dialogue but also toward readers who may not have an extensive background in disability studies. As a result, his highly readable introduction not only clearly delineates his own project, but also offers a useful primer on relevant debates in disability studies, and on ongoing post-Enlightenment philosophical debates about the implications of Cartesian subjectivity for our understanding of the self in relation to the body, the senses, and perception.

Colangelo's overall project hones in not primarily on disability but, rather, on its presumed but never-defined counterpart, ability, or on what Colangelo terms the "diaphanous abled body" (1). Colangelo initiates his extended exploration of the incoherence of able-bodiedness as a category in the first paragraph of his acknowledgments by invoking his own experience as a humanities scholar writing a book during the COVID pandemic. He sets forth a beautifully crafted paradox, observing that writing this book during the pandemic made [End Page 155] apparent not only "how much the work of writing a book is the labor of many, regardless of what the byline might tell you," but also "how much [he] miss[es] this codependency when it is so suddenly taken away" (vii). This simple description of the author's own situation during the pandemic introduces the central contradiction with which this study contends: everyone is dependent on others, and yet this dependency is, for most of us, for much of our lives, routinely and compulsorily denied, with results that are themselves distorting and disabling.

As Colangelo readily demonstrates, to be ostensibly not disabled is in no way the same as having complete adequacy and self-sufficiency in every respect. Indeed, to be not disabled is rather like possessing the Lacanian phallus, a condition simultaneously categorical and imaginary. To be in soi-disant possession of a non-disabled body or, in Colangelo's terms, of the "mythic diaphanous abled body," is not, of course, to be superbly able in every respect (whatever that might mean) but, rather, to have a "means to side-ste[p] the omnipresence of weakness and limitation" (4). Thus, self-deception and misrecognition are at the heart of the fundamentally illusory distinction on which the category, disabled, is predicated.

The study's theoretical focus—the illusory nature of the abled/disabled opposition—is well suited to its literary critical engagements with a series of Irish modernist writers (James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, George Egerton, and Elizabeth Bowen). Through a series of adroit critical readings, Colangelo's work amounts to a substantial contribution to "a disability poetics–that is, a theory of how disability relates to and constructs patterns of meaning within works of literature" (22). Championing "literary disability studies [as] a collection of tools and models for reading the construction of abled and disabled bodies generally," Colangelo's focus "on ability rather than disability puts the more abstract processes of social construction at the forefront" (22). This approach results, at times, in a kind of "disability formalism" that positions ability as arising "from a convergence of the enlightenment call to disembodied reason with the role of the novel in constructing the bourgeois subject" (22).

The Cartesian epistemology Colangelo critiques construes the disabled as an easily identified Other, an illusion that is reinforced through the ways we habitually frame our perceptions of our own and others' bodies. Colangelo's inquiry into the implications of this constitutive post-Enlightenment binary opposition as fundamentally perceptual elegantly brings us to the study's first chapter, which takes as its touchstone...

Diaphanous Bodies:杰里米-科兰杰洛(Jeremy Colangelo)的《能力、残疾与现代主义爱尔兰文学》(评论
以下是内容的简要摘录,以代替摘要:评论者: Diaphanous Bodies:杰里米-科兰杰洛(Jeremy Colangelo)著,玛戈-盖尔-巴克斯(Margot Gayle Backus)(简历) DIAPHANOUS BODIES:能力、残疾与现代主义爱尔兰文学》,作者杰里米-科兰杰洛。安阿伯:密歇根大学出版社,2021 年。xiii + 216 pp.70 美元布书,54.95 美元电子书。杰里米-科兰杰洛(Jeremy Colangelo)的研究极具独创性,名为《不透明的身体》(Diaphanous Bodies:能力、残疾和现代主义爱尔兰文学》是对蓬勃发展的残疾研究学术以及爱尔兰和现代主义研究的杰出贡献。科兰杰洛的文笔清晰明了,而且常常很优雅。他的论证条理清晰、思路清晰、说服力强,而且他对所涉及领域的其他学者的态度也非常慷慨,不仅对与他的作品进行对话的学者,而且对可能没有残疾研究方面广泛背景的读者也是如此。因此,他的导论可读性很强,不仅清晰地勾勒出了他自己的研究项目,而且还提供了一个有用的入门指南,让读者了解残疾研究领域的相关争论,以及启蒙运动后哲学界关于笛卡尔主体性对我们理解与身体、感官和知觉相关的自我的影响的争论。科兰杰洛的整个项目主要关注的不是残疾,而是其假定但从未定义的对应物--能力,或者科兰杰洛所说的 "不透明的有能力的身体"(1)。在致谢的第一段,科兰杰洛引用了自己作为一名人文学者在 COVID 大流行期间写书的经历,开始了他对健全作为一个类别的不一致性的深入探讨。他提出了一个巧妙的悖论,指出在大流行期间写这本书不仅让 [尾页 155]人意识到 "写一本书的工作是许多人的劳动,不管书名可能会告诉你什么",而且 "当这种依赖性突然被剥夺时,[他]是多么怀念这种依赖性"(vii)。作者对自己在大流行病期间境况的简单描述,引出了本研究争论的核心矛盾:每个人都依赖于他人,然而,对于我们中的大多数人来说,这种依赖性在我们生活的大部分时间里都被例行公事地、强制性地否认了,其结果本身就是扭曲和致残。正如科兰杰洛轻松证明的那样,表面上没有残疾绝不等同于在各方面都完全足够和自给自足。事实上,不残疾就像拥有拉康式的阴茎,是一种同时具有绝对性和想象性的条件。当然,拥有一个非残疾的身体,或者用科兰杰洛的话说,拥有 "神话般的透明的残疾身体",并不是说在各个方面都非常优秀(不管这意味着什么),而是说拥有一种 "侧身于无处不在的虚弱和限制的手段"(4)。因此,自欺欺人和错误认知是 "残疾人 "这一类别所基于的根本性虚幻区别的核心所在。本研究的理论重点--残疾人与健全人对立的虚幻本质--非常适合其对一系列爱尔兰现代主义作家(詹姆斯-乔伊斯、塞缪尔-贝克特、乔治-埃格顿和伊丽莎白-鲍温)的文学批评。通过一系列巧妙的批判性解读,科兰杰洛的作品对 "残疾诗学--即残疾如何与文学作品相关并在文学作品中建构意义模式的理论"(22)做出了重大贡献。科兰杰洛倡导 "将残疾文学研究[作为]解读健全人和残疾人身体建构的工具和模式的集合",他 "关注能力而非残疾,将更为抽象的社会建构过程置于首位"(22)。这种方法有时会产生一种 "残疾形式主义",将能力定位为 "启蒙运动对非实体理性的呼唤与小说在构建资产阶级主体中的作用的交汇"(22)。科兰杰洛批判的笛卡尔认识论将残疾人理解为易于识别的 "他者",这种错觉通过我们习惯性地框定对自己和他人身体的看法而得到强化。科兰杰洛将后启蒙运动时期的二元对立看作是感知的根本,他对这种二元对立的影响进行了探究,这优雅地将我们带入了本研究的第一章,该章以..............
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来源期刊
JAMES JOYCE QUARTERLY
JAMES JOYCE QUARTERLY LITERATURE, BRITISH ISLES-
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期刊介绍: Founded in 1963 at the University of Tulsa by Thomas F. Staley, the James Joyce Quarterly has been the flagship journal of international Joyce studies ever since. In each issue, the JJQ brings together a wide array of critical and theoretical work focusing on the life, writing, and reception of James Joyce. We encourage submissions of all types, welcoming archival, historical, biographical, and critical research. Each issue of the JJQ provides a selection of peer-reviewed essays representing the very best in contemporary Joyce scholarship. In addition, the journal publishes notes, reviews, letters, a comprehensive checklist of recent Joyce-related publications, and the editor"s "Raising the Wind" comments.
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