Disability as Epistemic Experience: Autofictional Representations of Disability in German and American Literature
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Date
2021-04-27
Authors
Yeomans, Kaitlin
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This thesis seeks to explore how authors with disability create knowledge about the experience of disability that differs from cultural perceptions of disability. This thesis also utilizes autofictional narratives as a distinct phenomenon of disability that straddles the divide between fiction and autobiography. Utilizing critical disability studies as well as traditional literary studies as frameworks, I analyze how the author and the figure in autofiction create a literary identity that resonates back to the experience of the author with emphasis on disability. I examine the German narrative Psychocalypse oder das Warten auf Fu and the American narrative Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System. Often metaphorized in fiction, disability becomes a source of epistemology in autofiction as the authors represent themselves rather than being represented by others and as others.