The Materiality of Disability in Animal’s People

Grunawalt, Jordan

The Materiality of Disability in Animal’s People

dc.contributor.advisor	Baishya, Amit
dc.contributor.author	Grunawalt, Jordan
dc.contributor.committeeMember	Rios, Gabriela
dc.contributor.committeeMember	John, Catherine
dc.date.accessioned	2019-06-06T18:21:24Z
dc.date.available	2019-06-06T18:21:24Z
dc.date.issued	2019-05
dc.date.manuscript	2019-05
dc.description.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.	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/11244/320324
dc.language	en_US	en_US
dc.rights	Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International	*
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/	*
dc.subject	Literature, English.	en_US
dc.thesis.degree	Master of Arts	en_US
dc.title	The Materiality of Disability in Animal’s People	en_US
ou.group	College of Arts and Sciences::Department of English	en_US
shareok.nativefileaccess	restricted	en_US