Disability in German Literature, Film, and Theater

Book excerpt: Established, commissioned, and edited by the Department of German at the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh German Yearbook encourages and disseminates lively and open discussion of themes pertinent to German Studies. No other yearbook covers the entire field while addressing a focused theme in each issue. Volume 4 focuses on disability in German literature, film, and theater. Disability Studies is part of the broader discussion of difference and "otherness," of the politics of identity, human rights, ethics, and discrimination. It retrieves disabled figures from literature, film, and theater and discusses them vis- -vis "normalcy." Recently, Disability Studies has explored the binary of "able" and "disabled," strategies of exclusion, and the marginalization and suffering of the disabled body under social and medical structures of control. It is now entering a phase of positive reflection addressing the ontological politics of disability. Accordingly, this volume examines cultural representations of disability that raise questions about "the humane gaze" and posits disability as historically central to discussions of humanity, modernity, and social and moral behavior in German-language literature, film, and theater. Points of focus include blindness, physical deformity, injury, illness, and euthanasia. Contributors: Martin Brady, Pauline Eyre, Corinna H ger, Karin Harrasser, Urte Helduser, Eleoma Joshua, Susanne C. Knittel, Anna Kornbrodt, Siegfried Saerberg, Rosa Schneider. Eleoma Joshua is Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Michael Schillmeier lectures in the Department of Sociology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich.