Disability, Literature, Genre: Representation and Affect in Contemporary Fiction

by Ria Cheyne

Examining the intersection of disability and genre in popular works of horror, crime, science fiction, fantasy, and romance published since the late 1960s, Disability, Literature, Genre is a major contribution to both cultural disability studies and genre fiction studies. Drawing on recent work on affect and emotion, the book explores how disability makes us feel, and how those feelings shape interpersonal and fictional encounters. Written in a clear and accessible style, Disability, Literature, Genre offers a timely reflection on the rapidly growing body of scholarship on disability representation, as well as an innovative new theorisation of genre. By reconceptualising genre reading as an affective process, Ria Cheyne establishes genre fiction as a key site of investigation for disability studies. She argues that genre fiction's unique combination of affectivity and reflexivity makes it ideally suited to the production of reflexive representations of disability: representations which encourage the reader to reflect upon what they understand about disability, and potentially to rethink it. Examining the affective - and effective - power of disability representations in a wide range of popular genre fiction, this book will be essential reading for academics in disability studies, literary studies, popular culture studies, and the medical humanities.

Genres: Nonfiction, Disability

256 pages, Hardcover

Published December 31, 2019

Reviews

[Bookshire Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent dive into disability in genre literature (dealing with horror, crime fiction, fantasy, scifi and romance in equal measure!), recognising its importance without coming up with false arguments and justifications. Written consciously accessible so non-academics and academics alike can benefit from it. 5 stars, all the notes (seriously, I highlighted almost the entire book).

[Heather]

Really great read. It really challenged the way I’ll think about disability in horror going forward and connects wonderfully to my recent read of Rosemarie Garland-Thompson’s Seeing the Disabled. I particularly enjoyed that the book tried to focus on more positive or unorthodox instances of disabled representation as opposed to just critiquing instances where it’s fallen down. Sort of a ‘look, it can be done’. I wasn’t expecting to see A Song of Ice and Fire in here but it was lovely to see. Tyrion, Bran, Jaime and all the supporting characters and their journeys are a super important part of the series to me so it was lovely to see the analysis here, an analysis that I do very much agree with. It also gave me some very interesting future reading recommendations.

[liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very useful quotes for my dissertation haha