Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Body
- The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Body
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Chronology of Publications and Events
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Genres
- Part II Critical Methodologies
- 9 Feminist Theory, Feminist Criticism, and the Sex/Gender Distinction
- 10 Reading Bodies and Textual Materialities
- 11 How to Read Disabled Bodies in History
- 12 How to Read Disabled Bodies Now
- 13 Health Humanities, Illness, and the Body in American Literature
- 14 The Indigenous Body in American Literature
- 15 The Black Body and the Reading of Race
- 16 Ecocriticism and the Body
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
12 - How to Read Disabled Bodies Now
Crip-of-Color Critique
from Part II - Critical Methodologies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2022
- The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Body
- The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Body
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Chronology of Publications and Events
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Genres
- Part II Critical Methodologies
- 9 Feminist Theory, Feminist Criticism, and the Sex/Gender Distinction
- 10 Reading Bodies and Textual Materialities
- 11 How to Read Disabled Bodies in History
- 12 How to Read Disabled Bodies Now
- 13 Health Humanities, Illness, and the Body in American Literature
- 14 The Indigenous Body in American Literature
- 15 The Black Body and the Reading of Race
- 16 Ecocriticism and the Body
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
Summary
Eli Clare’s groundbreaking memoir Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation (1999) examines the intersections of class, queerness, and disability. Clare, influenced by queer women of color, disrupts the boundaries between gender identity, sexuality, and disability, demonstrating how these various identities are hopelessly entangled. For Clare, “[g]ender reaches into disability, disability wraps around class; class strains against abuse; abuse snarls into sexuality; sexuality folds on top of race … everything finally piling into a single human body.”1 Clare articulates how queer/crip theories of the body disrupt normalcy and refuse easy answers as they question and blur the boundaries of identity and agency. Clare’s work is foundational to the subfield of disability studies called crip theory.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Body , pp. 180 - 194Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022