Skip to main content

Potentialities: Toward a Transformative Theory of Disabled Masculinities

  • Chapter
Emerging Perspectives on Disability Studies

Abstract

Through literature and cinema we know them, and disability scholars have named them—the too-prideful Oedipus; the corrupt Richard III; the poor Tiny Tim; villainous, vengeful amputees such as Captain Hook, Captain Ahab, and Long John Silver; the violent and dejected Phantom; the cold, impotent Clifford Chatterley; Wilfred Owens’s lonely, pathetic war vet; the power-hungry, evil Darth Vadar; the dishonest Professor from the DaVinci Code; the bratty and malevolent Mini-Me from the Austin Powers movies and more—the hit parade of disabled male characters whose textual and cinematic presence links disabled masculinity with corrupted power, immorality, and hypersexuality on the one side, and pity, tragedy, asexuality, and dejection on the other, and sometimes a mixture of both.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Asch, Adrienne, and Michelle Fine. “Nurturance, Sexuality, and Women with Disabilities: The Example of Women and Literature.” In The Disability Studies Reader, ed. Lennard J. Davis, 241–259. New York: Routledge, 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bolt, David. “The Blindman in the Classic: Feminisms, Ocularcentrism and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.” Textual Practice 22.2 (2008): 269–289.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bordo, Susan. “Reading the Male Body.” In The Male Body: Features, Destinies, Exposures, ed. Laurence Goldstein, 265–306. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  • Connell, R. W. Masculinities. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • Couser, G. Thomas. “Conflicting Paradigms: The Rhetorics of Disability Memoir.” In Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture, ed. James C. Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson, 78–91. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Lennard J. “Constructing Normalcy: The Bell Curve, the Novel, and the Invention of the Disabled Body in the Nineteenth Century.” In The Disability Studies Reader, ed. Lennard J. Davis, 9–28. New York: Routledge, 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gardiner, Judith Kegan. “Introduction.” In Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions, ed. Gardiner, 1–30. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory.” In Gendering Disability, ed. Bonnie G. Smith and Beth Hutchison, 73–106. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gerschick, Thomas J. “Sisyphus in a Wheelchair: Physical Disabilities and Masculinity.” 1998. In Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life, ed. David M. Newman and Jodi O’Brien, 165–178. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gerschick, Thomas J., and Adam Stephen Miller. “Coming to Terms: Masculinity and Physical Disability.” In Men’s Lives, ed. Michael S. Kimmel and Michael A. Messner, 262–275. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, Kim Q. “Reimagining Disability and Gender through Feminist Disability Studies.” In Feminist Disability Studies, ed. Kim Q. Hall, 1–10. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hockenberry, John. “Walking with the Kurds.” In Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out, ed. Kenny Fries, 22–36. New York: Plums, 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. 1937. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  • James, Jennifer. “Gwendolyn Brooks, World War II, and the Politics of Rehabilitation.” In Feminist Disability Studies, ed. Kim Q. Hall, 136–158. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • Linton, Simi. My Body Politic: A Memoir. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mairs, Nancy. Waist High in the World: A Life among the Non-Disabled. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  • Manderson, Lenore, and Susan Peake. “Men in Motion: Disability and the Performance of Masculinity.” In Bodies in Commotion: Disability and Performance, 230–242. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • McElaney, Hugh. “Alcott’s Freaking of Boyhood: The Perplex of Gender and Disability in Under the Lilacs.” Children’s Literature 34 (2006): 139–160.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mcilvenny, Paul. “The Disabled Male Body ‘Writes/Draws Back’: Graphic Fictions of Masculinity and the Body in the Autobiographical Comic The Spiral Cage.” In Revealing Male Bodies, ed. Nancy Tuana et al., 100–125. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mintz, Susannah B. “Lyric Bodies: Poets on Disability and Masculinity.” PMLA 127.2 (March 2012): 248–263.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mitchell, David T. “Narrative Prosthesis and the Materiality of Metaphor.” In Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, ed. Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, 15–30. New York: Modern Language Association, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Toole, Corbett Joan. “The Sexist Inheritance of the Disability Movement.” In Gendering Disability, ed. Bonnie G. Smith and Beth Hutchison, 294–300. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shakespeare, Tom. “The Sexual Politics of Disabled Masculinity.” Sexuality and Disability 17.1 (1999): 53–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shuttleworth, Russell P. “Disabled Masculinity: Expanding the Masculine Repertoire.” In Gendering Disability, ed. Bonnie G. Smith and Beth Hutchison, 166–178. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomas, Calvin. “Reenfleshing the Bright Boys; or, How Male Bodies Matter to Feminist Theory.” In Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions, ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner, 60–89. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Torrell, Margaret Rose. “From India-Rubber Back to Flesh: A Re-evaluation of Male Embodiment in Jane Eyre.” In The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability, ed. David Bolt, Julia Miele Rodas, and Elizabeth Donaldson, 71–90. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2012.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. “On Nancy’s Husband George: Masculinity, Disability, and Sex after Cancer.” In On the Literary Nonfiction of Nancy Mairs: A Critical Anthology, ed. Meri Lisa Johnson and Susannah B. Mintz, 97–114. New York: Palgrave, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. “Plural Singularities: The Disability Community in Life Writing Texts.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 5.3 (2011): 321–338.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, Daniel J. “Fighting Polio like a Man: Intersections of Masculinity, Disability, and Aging.” In Gendering Disability, ed. Bonnie G. Smith and Beth Hutchison, 119–133. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors

Editor information

Matthew Wappett Katrina Arndt

Copyright information

© 2013 Matthew Wappett and Katrina Arndt

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Torrell, M.R. (2013). Potentialities: Toward a Transformative Theory of Disabled Masculinities. In: Wappett, M., Arndt, K. (eds) Emerging Perspectives on Disability Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137371973_10

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics