Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation

by Ato Quayson

Focusing primarily on the work of Samuel Beckett, Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka, and J. M. Coetzee, Ato Quayson launches a thoroughly cross-cultural, interdisciplinary study of the representation of physical disability. Quayson suggests that the subliminal unease and moral panic invoked by the disabled is refracted within the structures of literature and literary discourse itself, a crisis he terms "aesthetic nervousness." The disabled reminds the able-bodied that the body is provisional and temporary and that normality is wrapped up in certain social frameworks. Quayson expands his argument by turning to Greek and Yoruba writings, African American and postcolonial literature, depictions of deformed characters in early modern England and the plays of Shakespeare, and children's films, among other texts. He considers how disability affects interpersonal relationships and forces the character and the reader to take an ethical standpoint, much like representations of violence, pain, and the sacred. The disabled are also used to represent social suffering, inadvertently obscuring their true hardships.

Genres: Disability, Nonfiction, Theory

246 pages, Paperback

First published June 8, 2007

About the author

Ato Quayson is Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism, Strategic Transformations in Nigerian Writing, Calibrations: Reading for the Social, and Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation, as well as editor of the two-volume Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature, coeditor of A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism Studies and general editor of the Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry.

Reviews

[Aartjan ter Haar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quayson asserts that representations would directly affect the "social views of people with disabilities". Despite the author developing a relevant typology of nine ways to represent people with disabilities, the book only discusses literary representations.

Although it may be difficult for non-native speakers to read, the content is unquestionable fascinating.