Disabling modernism: disability and anti-eugenic ethics in the modernist novel

Examining the works of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, and Djuna Barnes, “Disabling Modernism: Disability and Anti-Eugenic Ethics in the Modernist Novel” argues that the modernist novel allows for significant displays of resistance to dominant eugenic ideologies of the early 20^th century. This resistance largely occurs through the novels’ portrayals of gender, desire, and reproduction in eugenically excluded bodies. Whether by suggesting an erotic attraction to non-standard bodies; reproducing subjects by means other than regularized, “wholesome,” heterosexual relations; depicting queer modes of caretaking for eugenic bodies, which respect their fundamental difference; or insisting on the autonomy and value of disabled bodies as they are; these novels work to establish what I call an ethics of particularity: a sexual and ethical code that deems physical difference and contingency intrinsically valuable. These books suggest an ethical commitment not only to human variation and deviance, but to alterity; they demonstrate a fundamental belief in the radical otherness of others, which cannot be extinguished. This project's view of modernism presents an important counterpoint to critical perspectives that deem modernist novels intrinsically hostile to disabled bodies and fundamentally pro-eugenic in nature.

Note: Abstract extracted from PDF file via OCR.