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Prostheses of disability: Islamic fundamentalism and the disabled body in postcolonial Arab fiction

Hamdar, Abir

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Abstract

This essay focuses on the representational relationship between disability and Islamic fundamentalism in select contemporary postcolonial literary texts by Arab authors. The essay draws mainly on critical disability theory on the concept of prosthesis to argue that disability functions as a narrative and emotional prosthesis to narratives on Islamic fundamentalism at the same time as it lays bare this very process of instrumentalisation. To this end the essay asks: What are the privileged affects that attach themselves to representations of disability in fictions of Islamic fundamentalism? How do textual and affective prostheses emerge out of, or feed back into, Islamist contexts, worldviews and subjectivities? Finally, in what ways do the narratives under analysis uphold, lay bare or dismantle such prosthetic functions of the disabled body? In particular, this essay focuses on three specific prostheses of disability in the texts: conversion narratives, contemporary histories of Islamic fundamentalist violence and the figure of the disabled Islamist.

Citation

Hamdar, A. (2023). Prostheses of disability: Islamic fundamentalism and the disabled body in postcolonial Arab fiction. Medical Humanities, https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2022-012516

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 31, 2023
Online Publication Date Apr 17, 2023
Publication Date 2023
Deposit Date Apr 18, 2023
Publicly Available Date Apr 18, 2023
Journal Medical humanities.
Print ISSN 1468-215X
Electronic ISSN 1473-4265
Publisher BMJ Publishing Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
DOI https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2022-012516
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1176976

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