This dissertation explores the ways in which affective responses to disabled bodies are represented and how this invites us to read these bodies aesthetically. I argue that this affective impact... Show moreThis dissertation explores the ways in which affective responses to disabled bodies are represented and how this invites us to read these bodies aesthetically. I argue that this affective impact can be understood as an affordance, a term I use to describe how the appearance of and interaction with disabled bodies produces affective responses such as fear, wonder, or disgust. I study the relationship between representation and affective reactions through literature and other art forms. Through close readings of literary texts and works of art, this dissertation offers an alternative to so-called model thinking—an approach that emphasizes categorization. Instead, I propose a reading that focuses on how bodily capacities are culturally and socially translated into (dis)abilities. Unlike taxonomic approaches that categorize and generalize, this method allows moving from the particular to the private. Works of art, although prone to generalization, emphasize their unicity and resist categorization. By analyzing how different art forms represent disabled bodies, the dissertation brings a new dimension to understanding our emotional responses and the aesthetic appreciation of bodily diversity. Show less
In this paper, I propose an affective-formalist reading of what I call the affective affordances of disability; the way in which the representation of disability is able to move us. Through a... Show moreIn this paper, I propose an affective-formalist reading of what I call the affective affordances of disability; the way in which the representation of disability is able to move us. Through a comparative reading of two artworks, Michelangelo's David and Berlinde de Bruyckere's Into One-another III, to P.P.P., this paper explores the relationship between how reading for form in the mimetic representation of disability informs how we are affected by it. Concurrently, it explores how affect, conceived as a visceral force that moves through and impresses on bodies, can be generated through the way in which disabled bodies are represented in art. Show less
Shaping Idealisms consists of eleven articles published earlier and three unpublished articles, a general introduction and a conclusion. The articles are mostly about Middle English romances and... Show moreShaping Idealisms consists of eleven articles published earlier and three unpublished articles, a general introduction and a conclusion. The articles are mostly about Middle English romances and nineteenth- and twentieth-century romance-related texts. The general theme is the tension between conventional hegemonic idealism and embedded criticism of that. The approach is an application of modern critical theories to medieval texts and modern related texts in order to analyse their subtextual premisses preliminary to other types of analysis. The texts have been treated as autonomous for the occasion. The main themes are: the difference between romance and allegory (symbolism); __dialogic texts__ and the agendas of clerkly and minstrel authors (formalism); linear, cyclic and concentric narrative structures (structuralism); characters as __actants__, and the symbolism of settings (narratology); and __diff_rance__, and 'the other' as antitype (poststructuralism). For the nineteenth-century texts the emphasis lies on medieval stories in new cultural contexts and on the perspective of hindsight (Tennyson, William Morris); for the twentieth-century texts on fantasy and the development of romance in modern times (Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Lodge). Show less
