THE NARRATIVE AND DRAMATIC WORK of the Austrian author Thomas Bernhard is characterized by the frequent occurrence of the figure of the “cripple,” who is explicitly described or self-identified as such. Examples include the paralyzed wife of Konrad in a wheelchair in Das Kalkwerk (The Lime Works, 1970); the legless protagonists the Good Woman, Boris, and the Thirteen legless cripples from the home for cripples in Ein Fest für Boris (A Party for Boris, 1970); the circus director Caribaldi with a wooden leg in Die Macht der Gewohnheit (A Force of Habit, 1974); the World-Fixer, who pretends to have paralysis in his legs in Der Weltverbesserer (The World-Fixer, 1978); the paraplegic wheelchair user Clara in Vor dem Ruhestand: Eine Komödie von deutscher Seele (Eve of Retirement: A Comedy of the German Soul, 1979); Koller with a prosthetic leg and crutches in Die Billigesser (The Cheap-Eaters, 1980), and finally, the old man Herrenstein who uses a wheelchair in Elisabeth II (1987). This striking reoccurrence of the “cripple” in Bernhard's oeuvre has been noted, but rarely brought systematically into the focus of research.1 When it has been the focus, “crippling” is mostly interpreted as a metaphor that refers to a topos in research on Bernhard, namely the stagnation and meaninglessness of existence. In other words, the physical immobility is read as a metaphor which stands for the mental stagnation of the characters and, on a meta-level, for the meaninglessness of human life.

I do not wish to claim that such an interpretation has no justification; however, the aim of the chapter is to show that the motif of “crippling” and the figure of the “cripple” are fundamental for understanding Bernhard's work, and that they offer a variety of readings that reflect the ambiguity, irony, deconstruction, contradiction, and uncertainty that characterize his texts. Taking into account the theoretical approaches of disability studies, in this chapter I intend to show that Bernhard's texts refuse to constitute one-dimensional representations of disability as a negative category of identity and that they systematically undermine hegemonic knowledge and expectations about disability. To demonstrate the intricate and complex positionings of disability in Bernhard's work, I will analyze, first, the relationship between body, mind, and prostheses in the narrative The Cheap-Eaters and, second, “disability drag” in the dramas A Party for Boris and The World-Fixer.