The Materiality of Disability in Animal’s People

Abstract

Metaphors are useful tools for understanding large, complicated issues, but they are inherently limiting. Particularly in a disability context, the application of metaphor relegates the material differences of a disabled body to a symbol which serves as a stand-in for a larger social movement outside of the immediacy of the disabled experience. The materiality of disability then, or the real-world consequences of disability as opposed to the metaphorical implications, must be considered as visceral a component impacting the individual disabled body. In postcolonial discourse, little has been done through the frame of disability, and while many postcolonial novels deal with disabled characters, they are often used as a metaphor. In the emergent novel, Animal’s People, the protagonist, Animal, enacts agency in an alternative, but not incomplete way. He claims the identity “animal” as a liberatory act, exerting agency in an intimate, but distinctly disabled manner. Studying how others view Animal, his physical disabilities, mental faculties, and subsequent death sequence reveals how he enacts agency.