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

Hamdar, Abir

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, 49(4), 604-612. 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: 2023-12
• 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
• Volume: 49
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 604-612
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2022-012516
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1176976