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" Performing disability : "
Conroy, Colette
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Latin Dissertation
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| Record Number
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1096856
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| Doc. No
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TLets488469
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| Main Entry
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Conroy, Colette
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| Title & Author
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Performing disability :\ Conroy, Colette
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| College
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Royal Holloway, University of London
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| Date
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2007
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| student score
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2007
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Abstract
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The trajectory of my argument moves from thinking about disabled bodies asexceptional or unusual bodies in Chapter One to thinking about impairedbodies as exemplary bodies in Chapter Eight.Analysing disabled bodies on stage and disability and impairment in dramatictexts reveals methodological problems because the questions of whatimpairment can mean on stage are contested by an articulate politicalmovement.The first chapter is an attempt to develop questions about the differencescreated by disability in the act of acting. I use structuralist semiotics to breakdown and analyse the reasons for the confusions in the actor/audiencerelationship. The conceptual gaps between actor and character are alsodiscussed. Chapter Two asks how we can move from the apparent self-evidenceof impairment to the question of comparative or relative identity. Isuggest that disability is a representation of a set of complex and unstableideas. The complexity of these accumulated ideas seems to move us closer tothe sorts of complex articulations that are made in art works, including theatre.Ideas of disability as metaphor are the starting point for Chapter Three. This isthe point where the argument engages in theories of mind/body relationshipsand, informed by feminisms' methods of discussing physical difference, I turnto psychoanalytic theory.Chapter Four follows multiple signposts throughout theoretical and theatrewriting by going in search of references to disability in Freud. Chapters Five andSix connect the psychoanalytical innovations of Freud with the structuralist andpost-structuralist methodologies of Chapter One. I bring Lacan's material onsignification and Kristeva's on abjection to a discussion of disability andgender identity, and this suggests that the moment of reading disability is amoment of fixing identity within an interpretative frame. At this point I return tothe analysis of theatre with the advantage of insights from a range of theorists.Chapter Seven offers a discussion of a de-freaking of disability, or an un-disabling of freaks. I offer a summary of the implications of the theoretical workdeveloped so far, then in Chapter Eight I try out the innovations of this exerciseby analysing five pieces of theatre, selected randomly, through the framework ofdisability, offering an example of the uses of the theoretical methodologiesdeveloped in the thesis.
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| Added Entry
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Royal Holloway, University of London
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