Paralysed bodies and limited locomotor systems - a diachronic perspective on im/mobility in French literature (XVII-XXI c.)

• Applicant: Dr. Daniela Kuschel
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2022 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 498270478

The preoccupation with social categorisation processes and questions about hierarchy, difference, and stereotypical attributes is an integral part of the academic landscape. Since the late 1990s, especially with the founding of disability studies, there has also been a moved to literary and media representations of disability. The present project joins this research movement and examines the representations of paralysis and walking disorders in French literature from a diachronic perspective. Based on a selection of canonised texts – ranging from the French classicism via the Enlightenment to the present (the centuries XVII-XXI) – it will be examined by means of a discourse- and disability-critical analysis how in emblematic literary discourses – which are significant for the constitution of a national canon of values – paralysis and walking disorders are represented. These disorders are closely connected to ideas about (social) im/mobility, and how the represented bodily deviations also reflect the "regimes of normalisation" (Waldschmidt) to which these bodies are exposed. This critical examination of the canon allows to show how the discourses of norm and deviation construct the 'social body', which in turn serves to constitute a national self-conception. In the process, literary discourses are interrelated with other discourses (including medical and political discourses). On the basis of specific historical temporal thresholds (e.g. the Enlightenment), the respective body discourses will be examined selectively and set in relation to each other. The analysis of the different manifestations of the thematic aspect and its literary realization will allow us to fathom the different functions of paralysis in the texts. It can be assumed that paralysis is perceived as dysfunctional against the background of normative movements that stand metonymically for the entire functionality of the body and that the respective understanding of the relation of disability, society, and social mobility is reflected via this deviation.Such a view of a history of discourses can sharpen awareness of exclusion mechanisms and value hierarchies. By looking at the theme of paralysis and the question of (social) im/mobility, this research project aims to contribute to a specific literary history of disability and make the insights thus gained productive for not only the literary and media studies, but a broader social context.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position