Bad weeds grow tall : Self-fashioning of Interwar Armless Freak Performers in their Autobiographical Narratives
2013
Abstract
The article is dealing with ways in which bodily difference was produced in autobiographies published by renowned Czech "armless wonders" (Carl H. Unthan and František Filip) before the WWII.
The author concentrates on intersections of discourse which made possible for freak performers to articulate and often also "neutralize" their disability; beside gender, ethinicty and class the author concentrates on how ideologies of heteronormativity, compulsory able-bodedness, liberal individualism and capitalism intermingled in the autobiographical narratives concerned.